Pharmacy

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Horatio C. Wood, Jr., in speaking on “The Future Elaboration of a Course in Pharmacy,” said that, as a commercial pursuit, the business of pharmacy must necessarily be one of limited scope and possibilities; as a profession, however, pharmacy can be developed into an occupation of laudable aims and high ideals. He believes that the pharmacist should develop as the assistant and the adviser of the physician, who in turn must depend more and more on the efforts of the pharmacist to select for him and to improve on the efficiency of the available articles of the materia medica. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But there are innumerable small accidents, and little ailments to which humanity is liable, which quite legitimately come within the province of pharmacy to treat, and the pharmacist, if he is wise, is a much safer man to treat these than the clergy and the laity, who are ever ready to prescribe for each other upon any and all occasions. The best and wisest exponents of medicine admit this right on the part of pharmacy, and welcome the service which is rendered by it to sufferers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If they wanted to practise surgery, an extra year in the study of anatomy was required. I published the text of this law, which was issued by the Emperor Frederick II about 1241, in the Journal of the American Medical Association three years ago. It also regulated the practice of pharmacy. Drugs were manufactured under the inspection of the government and there was a heavy penalty for substitution, or for the sale of old inert drugs, or improperly prepared pharmaceutical materials. ”

“ With this attitude on the part of the men supposed to be serving the public and the medical profession by the practice of pharmacy, is it any wonder that it is difficult to induce the medical profession to prescribe official preparations or combinations of official drugs in place of ready-made commercial substitutes largely drawn from among the proprietaries or specialties? ”

“ The Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons still appoint Inspectors of Drugs, who, even in the days when their power was more absolute, could not altogether prevent curious pharmacy. An old practitioner in the West recently told of a candidate who "knew how ipecacuan was made": "half an ounce of tartar emetic to a pound of pease meal." This represented the practical mode of pharmacy in the eastern part of a large town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mistake (a very common one) which pharmacy is making, is that it wants the reward before it has made the effort and suitably equipped itself for the service. I exhort the pharmacist of the future to be unremitting [53] in his efforts to raise himself and his calling to a professional status, and then I predict for him that in the natural course the dispensing of medicines will come to him. ”

“ Instead of asking him what are the elementary forms of matter, or what is a water-bath, or to give the family name of a plant yielding a drug, it would be better to give him some drug or chemical to identify, to carry out the tests for purity according to the Pharmacopœia and to make a preparation.
The boards of pharmacy have a very important work to perform in determining the fitness of candidates and in determining whether the colleges are faithfully carrying on their work. ”

“ The Dispensaries established by the physicians were not long maintained, but apparently they provided the material of the modern chemist and druggist. “We have reason to believe,” writes Jacob Bell in his [156] Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain, “that the Assistants employed and instructed by the Physicians at these institutions became dispensing chemists on their own account; and that some of the apothecaries who found their craft in danger followed the example, from which source we may date the origin of the chemists and druggists.” ”

“ The whole tendency of what may be called popular pharmacy during the last few years has been in the direction of introducing to the public a great variety of powerful medicines, put up in convenient forms, and advertised in such a manner as to produce in the unthinking, a belief that they may be safely and rightly administered at all times and seasons, as remedies for some real or supposed malady. ”

“ Too much care cannot be exercised in this direction, for the manufacturer’s guarantee may in some instances prove to be only a label.
To do work of this kind means that the pharmacist shall be a master of the Pharmacopœia, that he shall be able to identify any substance in the Pharmacopœia, carry out any of the tests, and make 105any of the preparations in the Pharmacopœia and National Formulary, processes for which are given. The least, then, that the colleges of pharmacy can do is to prepare their students to employ the Pharmacopœia and the National Formulary as working guides. ”

“ Their places of business appear to be news-agencies, refreshment parlors, stationery stores—the drugs are “on the side,” or rather in the rear. Sometimes, I am told, the proprietors of these places know nothing at all about pharmacy, but employ a prescription clerk who is a capable pharmacist. Here the druggist has stepped down from his former position as the manager [pg 231] of a business and has become a servant. All of which looks to me as if the pharmacist himself might be beginning to accept the valuation that some people are putting upon his services to the community. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Such term does not include a pharmacy that dispenses prescription medications to patients primarily through the mail, nursing home pharmacies, long-term care facility pharmacies, hospital pharmacies, clinics, charitable or not-for-profit pharmacies, government pharmacies, or pharmacy benefit managers. ”

“ Most prescription clerks pick up their knowledge of pharmacy between errands and “by practice,” as it is called, without even an elementary knowledge of chemistry or any systematic course of training. There are in all fourteen schools of pharmacy in the United States; 1 in San Francisco, 1 in Chicago, 1 in Louisville, 1 in New Orleans, 1 in Baltimore, 1 in Boston, 1 in Ann Arbor, Mich., 1 in St. Louis, 2 in New York City, 1 in Cincinnati, 1 in Philadelphia, 1 in Pittsburg, 1 in Nashville, and 1 in Washington. ”

“ In addition, such physicians have been accepting the statements of laymen, not only as to the composition of the nostrums, but as to their use. In every state the practice of pharmacy is regulated by law: before assuming the responsibility of compounding medicines a druggist must have studied and passed an examination in pharmacy. Public safety demands and the law requires it. There are some doctors, however, who will allow laymen who are not chemists, pharmacists or physicians to formulate and compound a prescription and tell them what it is good for and how to use it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pharmacy cures sickness by drugs, surgery heals by the use of knife and cautery, the species concerned with diet prescribes a regimen for the removal of disease, that concerned with diagnosis proceeds by determining the nature of the ailment, that concerned with remedies by prescribing for the immediate removal of the pain. The species of medicine, then, are pharmacy, surgery, diet and regimen, diagnosis, prescription of remedies. ”

“ By the adoption of the Pure Food and Drugs Act both the responsibility and the obligation of the pharmacist are increased and added importance must attach to his position. He should take as much pride in his ability to pronounce upon the quality of an article guaranteed by the manufacturer, or in making a preparation which he himself guarantees, as he has heretofore taken in his ability to decide upon the compatibility, or to question the dosage, of a prescription. He must stand between the manufacturer and the physician as he has stood between the physician and the public. ”

“ Everything is left to the spirit of trade, and to the laws of supply and demand. The advances that have been made in pharmacy have come from within itself, unaided by any assistance from the state governments, and looked upon often with coldness or distrust by the public. In this way, in some of the large cities, with the influence of the sister profession of medicine, something has been done; but, even there, how much remains to be accomplished before pharmacy can assume the rank it holds in France and Germany! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our medical brethren have, as you are doubtless aware, an organization, similar in character, holding its sessions annually, in which all matters pertaining to their profession are fully discussed—the beneficial effects of which are already apparent, though the association has been in existence but a few years.
They cannot give to the subject of Pharmacy the attention it requires and deserves, neither is it a matter legitimately falling under their cognizance, but belongs to Phar­ma­ceu­tists themselves. ”

“ In 1748 the Apothecaries’ Corporation obtained a charter empowering them to license apothecaries to sell medicines in London, or within 7 m., and intended to use it to restrain chemists and druggists from practising pharmacy, and to prohibit physicians and surgeons from selling the medicines they prescribed, but the apothecaries, by paying increased attention to medical and surgical practice, had not only alienated the physicians and surgeons, but materially strengthened the position of chemists and druggists as dispensers of prescriptions. ”

“ We cannot err in applying this principle to pharmacy, and deciding that the dispensing chemist must be paid at a rate of remuneration which will enable him to get his living honestly and openly, and render him superior to the temptation to increase his profit and his income by tampering, in ever so small a degree, with the quality of the drugs he uses, and with the health, and may be the lives, of dear ones, and of men important to the community. ”

“ The term `filling new prescriptions for controlled substances in schedule III, IV, or V' means filling a prescription for an individual for a controlled substance in schedule III, IV, or V, if-- ` (A) the pharmacy dispensing that prescription has previously dispensed to the patient a controlled substance other than by means of the Internet and pursuant to the valid prescription of a practitioner that meets the applicable requirements of subsections (b) and (c) of section 309 (in this paragraph referred to as the `original prescription') ”