Pharmaceuticals

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Being composed of the choicest, concentrated vegetable extracts, their cost of production is much more than that of most pills found in the market, yet from forty to forty-four of them are put up in each glass vial, as sold through druggists, and can be had at the price of the more ordinary and cheaper made pills. Once used, they are always in favor. Their secondary effect is to keep the bowels open and regular, not to further constipate, as is the case with other pills. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There’s the combination for safety, results and satisfaction.—Rose Drug Co., St. Joseph, Mo.
Recovery Is Doubtful if the quality of the Drugs and Medicines given a patient is not above doubt.
We spare no effort in obtaining the purest and most reliable goods. Efficiency is dependent upon freshness in almost all Drugs, and all Prescriptions are compounded from Drugs which have not deteriorated through age.
Accuracy is the strong feature of our Prescription Department.—The White Cross Pharmacy, Rutland, Vt. ”

“ Finally, the manufacture of acetyl­salicylic acid in this country is another example of the fact that American chemists can produce the drug synthetics, and at the same time make products as good as, if not better than, those of German origin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the pharmacist puts up an ordinary, nonproprietary prescription, the patient gets no clue from the package as to the nature of the prescription employed. But when an original bottle of Neurosine is dispensed, even though the pharmacist puts his own prescription label on it, the patient sees the difference at once and knows just why the usual prescription bottle was not employed. He also knows that he can get the medicine with its original wrapper or label by merely showing the bottle to the druggist, for the words “Neurosine” and “Dios Chemical Co.” are blown in the glass. ”

“ In cases where the medicinal virtues are not apparently lodged in a single principle capable of being isolated, pharmacy has recourse to other processes, and obtains by expression, percolation, and evaporation, or distillation, often in vacuo, concentrated extracts which enable us to dispense with the crude drugs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many substances are, in themselves, so untractable, that the addition of some matter foreign to the active ingredients, is absolutely essential for imparting convenience of form. It is generally considered that very little skill and judgment is required in the selection of such a substance, provided it can fulfil the mechanical intention just alluded to—the fact however is, that the medicinal power of the pill may be materially controlled, modified, or even subverted, by the mode in which it is formed into a mass. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So unreliable are a majority of the fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles found in the drug-stores, that we long since found it necessary to have prepared in our laboratory, most of those which we employ. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While there have been great changes in the drug trade during the last fifty years, necessary to the increasing demand for drugs, the establishment of wholesale houses and some specialties, and in cities, the substitution of cigars, soda water, patent medicines, etc., for groceries and provisions, the dispensing apothecary is nearer to what he was hundreds of years ago, as we asserted at the commencement of this chapter, than any other professional we know of. ”

“ Whenever we are in a position to inquire into the facts by chemical or other means, we find that the Eliminative medicine is itself contained in the secretion which is augmented by its action, and that when the secretion upon which it usually acts is not augmented, the medicine has passed off by some other secretion instead. ”

“ The drug also has a definite market value and the pure substance in the form of powder, tablets or pills could not be sold at a price greatly in excess of the market value. Thus manufacturers, from business policy, add to it other drugs. There are now on the market numerous more or less secret and “fancy” preparations of phenolphthalein for which a price is charged out of all proportion to the value of the preparation. ”

“ As indicated in the Council’s report, Gray’s Glycerine Tonic Comp.—and what an absurd name!—is simply a mixture of ordinary drugs, requiring no skill whatever in compounding. If there is a physician living who cannot write a prescription offhand as good as this formula, that physician should either go back to a medical school or change his vocation. There is, and can be, no excuse for prescribing such a ready-made mixture, for every cross-roads drugstore has the ingredients and any pharmacist worthy of the name could compound it. ”

“ To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk—pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. ”

“ 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 people of India were skilled in chemical and pharmaceutical work. The drugs were prepared by them in a great variety of ways—as, for instance, extracts of the juices of plants, infusions, decoctions, electuaries, mixtures, syrups, pills, pastes, powders, suppositories, collyria, salves, etc. Practicing physicians carried with them a sort of portable medicine chest, and they often collected, themselves, the medicinal plants which they required. ”

“ It has been most gratifying to the laboratory that The Journal receives an increasing number of inquiries both as regards the chemical and pharmaceutical questions involved in the writing of prescriptions and as regards the composition of secret and semisecret proprietaries (often because they are prescribed by the inquirer’s colleague) and “patent medicines” (which are taken by his patient) . The laboratory has tried its best to answer the many inquiries received. Many of the questions which come in can be answered by a pharmacist or chemist without hesitation. ”