Pharmaceutical

“ In the past, pharmaceutical houses, ever anxious to market something new, on the slightest provocation have placed on the market, in the form of pills, powder, elixir, ampule, etc., every drug for which some sort of medical recommendation could be found. In marketing these dosage forms, the manufacturer has too often been little concerned about the quality of the drugs used.150 Just at present, for instance, some interest is being shown in iron cacodylate ”

“ That physicians have been insufficiently trained in regard to the pharmacy and chemistry of drugs has often been emphasized in pharmaceutical journals where prescriptions containing incompatible drugs are reported and where even plans are brought forward whereby the pharmaceutical profession may aid in remedying this difficulty. ”

“ The laboratory attempts to be to the members of the American Medical Association what the prescription pharmacist is, or should be, to the prescribing physician—a storehouse of chemical and pharmaceutical information. In the belief that an insufficient familiarity with the chemistry and pharmacy of drugs constitutes the chief reason for the extensive use of unscientific, worthless or fraudulent proprietary remedies, this service is rendered by the laboratory as a contribution to the cause of rational therapy. ”

“ The available literature on pure food and drug legislation is rapidly assuming huge proportions. In addition to the liberal space that is devoted to the question in the current numbers of pharmaceutical journals, a number of reprints of material of this kind have appeared. ”

“ Genuine Patent Medicines. Soda, Potass, Seltzer, and other Mineral Waters.
Agent to the British Empire Mutual Life Assurance Company.
p. 3G. W. PARNELL,
PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMIST,
11, VICTORIA ROAD, PIMLICO.
Prescriptions and FAMILY RECIPES are carefully prepared at this Establishment with Drugs of the purest quality, by duly qualified Assistants, under the immediate superintendence of the Principal, and dispensed in strict accordance with the Formulæ of the British and Foreign Pharmacopœias. ”

“ These investigations have included a study of the action of strychnin in cardiac disease, a comparison of the action of absorption and excretion of iodid preparations, a study of the pharmacology of the opium alkaloids, etc. Appreciating that the available knowledge of proprietary drugs is one sided in that it comes from investigations made by interested pharmaceutical concerns or from investigations made at the instigation of these firms, the Council is planning a comprehensive study of many of the synthetic drugs that have gained some vogue during recent years. ”

“ Commercially educated employees control the consumption of chemicals of all kinds in each department, and based on their figures, and the figures of the consumption of water, gas, steam, ice, compressed and rarified air, etc., used in the processes, exact calculations are made for each product monthly. Furthermore, there are scientific laboratories, one for inorganic chemistry, another for coal-tar colors of the benzine and naphthaline series, a third for those of the alizarine and anthraquinone groups, another for pharmaceutical and photographic products. ”

“ The enactment of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act illustrates the expansion of the definition of drug. One of the changes contemplated in S. 2800, an early version of the Act, [7] defined 'drug' to include
' (1) all substances and preparations recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia, Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, or National Formulary or supplements thereto; and (2) all substances, preparations, and devices intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals ”

“ In the chemical factories every drug required by the Medical Pharmacopoeia and every chemical required in the arts and manufactures was made, but no drugs were sold except on a medical prescription, or chemicals except to responsible parties. ”

“ Through laboratory research work, modern medical science has progressed to such an extent that in some diseases the form of medication has changed entirely, while in others medication is reduced to a minimum. Chemical combinations, synthetics, biological products, vaccines, etc., have all in a natural sequence deprived the pharmacist of many prescriptions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is not to pure chemistry alone that we are indebted for the elegant dosing of the present day; progressive pharmacy, with its tablets, its coated pills, and its capsules, has put to shame the old-time purveyor of galenicals. ”

“ It is a remarkable fact, and one which is attested by every medical man, that the action of a drug may be made effective or ineffective according to the manner in which it is prescribed. There are certain subordinate drugs which prepare the way, as it were, for the action of a principal drug, and the proportion between the ingredients of a prescription is of vital importance in relation to the effect produced. ”

“ The term 'human drug product' means the active ingredient of a new drug, antibiotic drug, or human biological product (as those terms are used in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Public Health Service Act) including any salt or ester of the active ingredient, as a single entity or in combination with another active ingredient. ”

“ It is to the science of Chemistry that Pharmacy must look for future advancement, and even the most obscure and most unintelligible of the many chemical investigations which are being carried on at present may eventually prove to be important steps in some line of reasoning which will have the enriching of pharmacy as its result. Nothing in science is too insignificant for notice. ”

“ If the action of a drug on the organism is chemical, and if neither the drug nor the organism has changed, the action must be the same. If we still desire to bring about the action and if there is no better way to do it, we must use the drug, and there is still need for the druggist. As a matter of fact, the number of drugs at your disposal today is vastly greater than ever before, largely owing to the labor, and the ingenuity, of the analytical chemist. ”

“ An extended examination of the subject would show us that pharmacy played a very important part in the founding, particularly of that field of chemistry which is usually designated by the name "organic chemistry"—a field in which many of the brilliant modern victories of chemists have been achieved. Without the fundamental work of pharmacists in extracting from plants their valuable constituents, organic chemistry would to-day be in its infancy, instead of being what it is—a giant of mighty strength, exerting a controlling influence upon a number of important occupations, including pharmacy. ”

“ Pharmacy, or the art of selecting, extracting, preparing, and compounding medicines from vegetable, animal, and mineral substances, is an acquirement which must have been almost as ancient as man himself on the earth. ”

“ Prescription economy does not mean to buy medicines where you can get them the cheapest—unless you can be sure of absolute purity, freshness and medicinal activity. Bring your prescriptions to us and we know that you will get the best and not pay too much for it, either. This is prescription economy.—Curtin and Perkins, St. Joseph, Mo.
We may not be the nearest drug store to you, but we will come the nearest to pleasing you, both in service and quality.—Miller’s Pharmacy, Chattanooga, Tenn. ”

“ Concluding, then, that it is impossible to account clearly for the actions of most medicines on Mechanical or on Chemical principles, we are led to infer that their influence must for the most part be vital in its nature—that it must be such as could only be exerted in the living body. Even then we are unable to fix upon any single rule or formula which shall be capable of accounting for the actions of all at once. So it seems that the only general explanation which we can offer of the modus operandi of medicines in the cure of diseases, is to say that they operate by various counteractions. ”

“ Everybody knows of the progress made in other branches—in bacteriology, in pathology, in biologic chemistry, in surgery, in etiology and in application of technical methods to diagnosis. Recently, however, pharmacologic research and the application of scientific methods in the study of the physiologic action of drugs are resulting in definite, positive progress. An important lesson, incidentally learned through this scientific investigation, is the fallibility of the drug therapy described in textbooks. ”

“ Drugs classed as similar are by no means alike in action; laxatives, tonics, carminatives, diuretics are combined with distinct advantage, economy of dose, enhanced effect, potency not obtainable with the single drug. ”

“ It will bean almost indispensable companion to the practicing Pharmacist and a very useful reference-book to the [17] Physician. It contains a brief but thorough explanation of all terms and processes used in practical pharmacy, an abstract of all that is essential to be known of each officinal drug, its preparations and therapeutic action, with doses: in Chemistry and Botany, much that is useful to the Physician and Pharmacist ”

“ The immediate and positive beneficial results of the law may be seen in the fact that now very few, if indeed any, spurious or sophisticated chemical preparations, for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal purposes, are even offered at our ports, or by any possibility find their way into our markets. ”

“ Every pharmacist has observed the greatly increased development of the commercial side of the drug business as compared with its scientific side, which rather seems to be accorded a secondary place in the conduct of its affairs, regardless of the fact that this feature is the one that gives it character, and the only one that distinguishes it from ordinary merchandising. ”

“ All drugs are more or less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing. ”

“ The pharmacy is by no means to be hurriedly passed by. It is the chemist's shop of the establishment, the place where students enter to be initiated into all the mysteries of compounding a prescription. ”

“ Progress toward a rational and scientific drug therapy must continue, and, therefore, it is important that the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry should continue to make the investigation of proprietary medicines its chief work. ”

“ I am well satisfied that the regulation of the dose of a medicine is even more important than it is usually supposed to be. Substances perfectly inert and useless in one dose may prove in another active and valuable. Hence may be explained the great efficacy of many mineral waters, whilst the ingredients which impart activity to them are found comparatively inert, when they become the elements of an artificial combination; and hence probably the failure of many alterative medicines, when no other rational cause can be assigned for it. ”

“ More than one druggist lacks material for putting up prescriptions: glycerine, cascara, bromide of potassium, boracic acid, carbolic disinfectants, ginger, zinc oxide, blue ointment, acetate of lead, and iodoform. ”

“ Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country, some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of them injurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignorance of the nature of the disease or the specific action of the remedy. The drug-shops are full of them, especially in country towns; and in the far West and on the Pacific coast I have been astonished at the quantity and variety displayed. They are found in almost every house ”

“ In such a condition of interest as that arising from its being the first or last day of an experiment, or that resulting from the view of the weight rising as the finger contracts, can have a very appreciable effect on the amount of work, it is clear that so interesting an occurrence as the administration of a drug must have a decided influence, and the interest so aroused will probably be equally great whether the nature of the drug is unknown, so that there is an element of mystery in the occurrence, or whether its nature is known. ”

“ But the public may be assured, that since the great improvements in chemical science, a large proportion of patent medicines have been analyzed, and are found to consist of old articles which physicians have expunged from their materia medica, to give place to more valuable and efficacious remedies. ”

“ It shall not be lawful for any Physician, Druggist, Apothecary, or any person or persons dealing in Drugs or Medicines, or engaged in preparing any compound to be given or administered as a medicine, to offer the same for sale without first affixing or attaching thereto, in a conspicuous manner, a written or printed recipe in the English language, stating the drug or drugs, medicine or medicines, or ingredients of which it is composed, together with the proportions of each. ”