Edward Morell Holmes

“ The principle of “one man one shop” is general; a pharmacist may not own more than one shop in the same town. In Holland he may not enter into any agreement, direct or indirect, with a medical man with regard to the supply of medicines. In Austria, Germany, Italy, Rumania and Russia the number of pharmacies is limited according to the population In France, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland the number is not limited, and every qualified pharmacist has the right to open a shop or buy a pharmacy. ”

“ He must have two places in the shop, one most clean for physic, and the base place for chirurgic stuff. He is neither to increase nor to diminish the physician's prescription, he is neither to buy nor to sell rotten drugs. He is only to meddle in his own vocation; and to remember that his office is only to be the physician's cook.”
The drugs used by the physicians and apothecaries were purchased from the grossarii or sellers in gross, who were subsequently called grocers, some of whom specialized as druggists and others as chymists or chemists. ”

“ Frederick II. in A.D. 1253 passed a law, which remained in force for a long time in the two Sicilies, by which every medical man was required to give information against any pharmacist who should sell bad medicine. The pharmacists were divided into two classes, the stationarii, who sold simple drugs and non-magisterial preparations at a tariff determined by competent authorities, and the confectionarii, whose business it was to dispense scrupulously the prescriptions of medical men; all pharmaceutical establishments were placed under the surveillance of the college of medicine. ”

“ The price of the drugs and the tariff for dispensing prescriptions is fixed by government authority. In Russia a prescription containing any of the poisons indicated in the schedules A and B in the Russian pharmacopoeia may not be repeated, except by order of the doctor. The use of pharmacopoeia preparations made by manufacturers is allowed, but the seller is held responsible for their purity and strength. The prices charged for dispensing are lower in countries where the number of pharmacies is limited by law, the larger returns enabling the profit to be lessened. ”

“ The curious signs on the coloured carboys in chemists' windows, which were commonly to be seen until the middle of the 19th century, were signs used by the alchemists to indicate various chemical substances. In 1694 the apothecaries had increased from 114 to nearly 1000, and many of them, having acquired a knowledge of the uses of medicine, began to prescribe medicines for their customers and to assume the functions of the physician, who retorted in 1697 by establishing dispensaries, where medicines could be procured at their intrinsic value, or at cost price. ”

“ Most continental countries have issued stringent laws against the sale of secret remedies, and these have been lately strengthened in Germany, France and Italy. In Switzerland secret remedies cannot be advertised without submitting the formula and a sample of the remedy to the board of health. ”

“ The duty of the Pharmaceutical Society is a purely legal one, and relates only to the schedules of poisons framed by the government to protect the public by rendering it a difficult matter to obtain the poisons most frequently used for criminal purposes. ”

“ The subjects included are systematic botany, vegetable morphology and physiology, chemistry, physics, materia medica, pharmacy, dispensing, posology, the reading of prescriptions, and a knowledge of poisons and their antidotes. The Poisons and Pharmacy Act of 1908 (section 4) has given the society power to regulate the preliminary training, arrange a curriculum, and divide the qualifying examination into two parts, so that an approximation to the standard of pharmaceutical education on the Continent is likely to take place within a short period. ”

“ The astrological belief that plants, animals and minerals are under the influence of the planets is shown in the older names of some of the metals, e.g. Saturn for lead, Venus for copper, and Mars for iron, and the belief that the colours of flowers indicated the particular planet they were under led to their use in diseases and for constitutions supposed to be under the same planet. ”

“ Any medicine, the composition of which is kept Patent medicines. secret, but which is advertised on the label for the cure of diseases, must in Great Britain bear a patent medicine stamp equal to about one-ninth of its face value. The British Medical Association published in 1907 a work on Secret Remedies, what they cost and what they contain. The analyses published in this work show that nearly all the widely advertised secret remedies contain only well-known and inexpensive drugs. ”

“ In course of time the knowledge of drugs, and consequently the number in use, gradually increased, and some of the preparations made in accordance with the art attained a celebrity that lasted for centuries. ”

“ Cantharides, tincture and all vesicating liquids, preparations or admixtures of. Carbolic acid, and liquid preparations of carbolic acid and its homologies containing more than 3% of those substances, except preparations for use as sheep-wash or for any other purpose in connexion with agriculture or horticulture, contained in a closed vessel distinctly labelled with the word “poisonous,” the name and address of the seller, and a notice of the special purposes for which the preparations are intended Chloral hydrate. ”

“ The first was subsequently known as Mithradatum Damocratis, and the second as Theriaca Andromache, the name Theriaca or Tiriaca being derived from the snake called Tyrus, the flesh of which was added to it by Andromachus. The former contained 55, or, according to some formulae, 72 ingredients, and occurs in all the dispensaries, from that of Corvus Valerius up to the pharmacopoeias of the 19th century; and aromatic preparations of opium are still used, under the name of Theriaka in Persia. ”

“ Those who have passed this examination are competent to perform analysis of all kinds, and generally obtain the preference for various appointments, such as head dispensers in government or other large hospitals, or as analysts. ”