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Valentine's Meat-Juice

In Typhoid Fever Valentine's Meat-Juice
demonstrates its Ease of Assimilation and
Power of Restoring and Strengthening.

1. Burney Yeo, M. D., Professor of Therapeu tics, King's College, London, in the well known work, "Food in Health and Disease": "In a very severe case of Typhoid, under our care in King's College Hospital, with most alarming and profuse hemorrhage, we carried out a rigorous method of feeding with remarkably satisfactory results. The clear indication was to keep the intestines absolutely at rest and to allow no debris of food to pass through to excite peristaltic action. It was necessary therefore to give food which, while adequate to sustain and strengthen the patient, should be wholly absorbed in the stomach and upper part of the small intestines. To give milk might be fatal. For our purpose we selected VALENTINE'S MEAT-JUICE, giving one teaspoonful in a wineglassful of cold water every three hours, with one teaspoonful of brandy. The patient's diet was absolutely limited to these quantities for seven days. The plan answered admirably and the patient made a perfect recovery and fairly rapid convalescence." For Sale by American and European Chemists and Druggists.

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P 194

VALENTINE'S MEAT-JUICE CO.,
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, U. S. A.

SOMETHING NEW
Huston Bros. Obstetrical Pan

"PROPHYLATIC"

Has the following great advantages:

1st-It is a PAN-not a pad.

2d-Takes up very little room.

3d-Positively keeps the bed clean every time.

4th-Has great depth and rigid sides, thus can be handled conveniently and carried from the room without spilling contents.

5th-Great comfort to the
patient by means of an in-
flatable back pad of any de-
sired size. With the excep-
tion of this small back-rest
this pan has
6th-Norubber to deteriorate.
7th-Splendid for instrument-
al deliveries.

Price of complete
outfitin handsome lea-
ther case. $5.00; ex-
tra covers, $1.50 per
dozen.

Made with heavy muslin or parchment covers (sterilized and aseptic), it is very inexpensive, as the cover can be thrown away after each case, the cost of each being only 122c.

The Huston Prophylatic Pan for Obstetrics is simple, economical and durable.

HUSTON BROTHERS COMPANY

30 East Randolph Street, Chicago

Full Lines Physicians' Supplies, Invalid Comforts, Etc.

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(RATTLESNAKE VENOM)

Crotalin shows brilliant results in cases of

EPILEPSY.

Neuralgia, Neuritis, Asthma,
Chorea and allied

NERVE TROUBLES are usually promptly relieved even after failure by other forms of treatment.

Our sterile solutions are carefully prepared
and have a uniform potency.

Bacteriologically and Physiologically Tested
WRITE FOR LITERATURE.

Rochester Biologic Corporation

ROCHESTER, N. Y.

The knowledge that a man can use is the only real knowledge; the only knowledge that has life and growth in it and converts itself into practical power. The rest hangs like dust about the brain, or dries like raindrops off the stones.-FROUDE

The Medical World

C. F. TAYLOR, M.D., Editor and Publisher.
A. L. RUSSELL, M.D., Associate Editors.
J. C. ROMMEL, M.D.,

E. S. TAYLOR, Business Manager.

Entered at the Philadelphia Postoffice as Second-Class Matter.

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con

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"THE MEDICAL WORLD" 1520 Chestnut Street

VOL. XXXIII

Philadelphia, Pa.

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The Retail Druggists from Their Own

Points of View.

The druggists' propaganda is to secure

The U. S. P. and N. F. propagandic movement of the National Association of Retail Druggists, which was begun in 1908, is a great big advertising campaign, which has for its object, not only to give publicity to the official preparations, but to clean out every sort of objectionable practise in the sale of medicins. Time was, only seven short years ago, when it was deemed all sufficient to impress the medical profession with the sterling worth of the U. S. P. and N. F. preparations, but the movement has made such great progress that it has become a universal onslaught on all crookedness in medicin. Of course, as the movement progressed, stumbling blocks were discovered, and among the largest of these was that of insufficient legislation, or, rather, loosely worded laws, that offered serious handicaps to the progress of the movement for the return to safe and sane pharmacy and medicin.

Many of the formulas in the "National Formulary" are imitations of proprietary preparations. Any preparation that is worthy of imitation is worthy of being used in the original.

We have no objection to their advertising to the medical profession what they can do. When druggists have done so it has redounded to the mutual benefit of doctor and druggist. The aim of the advertising, however, seems to be expressed by the following, quoted from the same and following pages above mentioned:

The ideal condition in pharmacy is, that the compounding and dispensing of all medical products be done by, and be under the supervision of, duly educated and licensed pharmacists, and by them only, without any exception.* Any work, any action, legislative or otherwise, any get-together movement or co-operative undertaking, or any sort of an effort at reform in drugdom that has not for its chief and ultimate object the institution

prescription work by force rather than by of the above-mentioned ideal condition is doomed to

choice. Instead of proving where the superiority that they claim lies, which would be the rational method, they are attempting by their propaganda to secure the enactment of laws and more laws to prevent physicians from dispensing remedies. So, while many of their obstructive bills failed of passage or were vetoed, they will not stop until they succeed in passing the laws they aim at. It remains for the medical profession to arouse itself to prevent the druggists from doing so.

The National Association of Retail Druggists' Journal for July 15th, says on page 749:

*

failure. If this truth will but sink into the mental makeup of all druggists, ideal conditions will soon be a reality.

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evil and allowing nine or a dozen others to flourish? It would be good fighting, of course, if pharmacists directed all their energies at one evil until it was completely subjugated or annihilated and then pass on to the next to repeat the dose. But right here is where one monumental mistake after another has been made-with all due respects to legislative leaders-namely, in all the fighting, no one thing has yet been settled right; not one evil has been completely annihilated; for the moment the drug organization starts a reform, gets something really worth while in the shape of a bill to present to the state legislature or to congress, along comes some outsider to urge that there ought to be an exception" inserted in section so-and-so, a "provided" should appear in the next section, and some "loop hole" must be left for the ever-present medicin baron somewhere else, and then the druggist's backbone, stiff, strong and rigid in the beginning, gradually changes to a jellyfish-like consistency, and when the bill becomes a law, it is so honeycombed with "except's," 'provided's," "if's," and "but's," that the druggists are in exactly the same position after the law is passed as they were before the bill was drafted.

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The trouble seems to be that very few druggists realize whither pharmacy is drifting, on account of their narrowness of vision. They fail to see that in the final analysis, only 25% of the trade in medicins today passes over their counters. They seem not to realize that the dispensing doctor claims to have the only economic method of treating disease; that the manufacturing pharmacist wants all for himself; that the free dispensary claims to have solved all problems of medicinal distribution; that the medicin peddler, to let him say it, is doing more good than all others put together, and so on and so forth-that these combined agencies have the other 75%, and that every one of these mischievous and ruinous evils has the protection of foolish laws.

Yet in spite of all these makers of cure-alls and advocates of systems, and with all their combined claims, efforts, and alleged results, sickness and disease is on the increase, if one except the decrease caused by improved sanitary measures.

Now, Mr. Pharmacist, can you realize the fact that the lack of ideal conditions in pharmacy has operated to increase sickness and disease? It has. This lack of backbone on the part of the pharmacist to fight for his rights has fostered a set of quacks, who, as competitors, are three times as powerful as his, and whose operations have resulted in making this a nation of chronically sick, weak, and diseased subjects.

Possibly this sounds radical, and some who read it may be "from Missouri." Well, let them hark back some twenty years and compare present-day conditions with those of that time. What will be found? In making comparisons, always let it be remembered that the factor of sanitation has operated largely to decrease disease and epidemics and always will, and that the population has largely increased, yet still disease is on the increase in proportion to population.

How many sick folks were in your home town twenty years ago, Mr. Druggist? Possibly you do not remember, but you know there were not nearly so many as there are to-day. To-day there are of sick folks an aggregate far outnumbering the saving

made by sanitation and hygiene.

How many people were taken to hospitals twenty

years ago? Very few. Yet to-day there are forty hospitals where one existed then, and practically all are filled to "suffocation." How many people are crowded into homes for the feeble-minded, into asylums for the wrecks of the narcotic and liquor habits? And how many were there twenty years ago?

But why continue this comparison? The difference is apparent to all if they will but open their eyes. Instead of progress, the tendency is backward. And what nation would not retrograde that allows by law every charlatan, every quack, every irresponsible fool, everybody who desires to practise medicin and treat real or fanciful ills, to tinker with the human body?

The druggist is not to be blamed so much for sins of commission, but he is entirely at fault in the sin of omission in that he is not a better guardian of honest medicin, and therefore he should see his way clear to get in on this propagandic advertising proposition.

The gist of all the above-quoted tirade seems to be a call to druggists to unite to favor or force the passage of laws putting the dispensing of remedies entirely in the hands of the druggists. If such a bill is passed anywhere, we suggest that as a protection against extortion of the public the bill include a proviso that the druggists shall be restricted to a charge of not more than 25 cents for each prescription.

Two

The latter part of the argument seems to infer that the increase of the number of hospitals, operations, feeble-mindedness, insanity and disease is due to the medical profession, tho possibly the reference to charlatans, quacks, fools, medicin peddlers, etc., as being permitted to practise medicin may serve as a loophole of escape from that inference. But the writer of the druggists' editorial missed one great source of evil in medical practise of which he cannot possibly have been ignorant, and that is counterprescribing by druggists. If he is ignorant of that matter he is not in a position to write editorials on the subject. fatalities as a result of counter-prescribing by druggists were mentioned in our pages in February, 1912, pages 46 and 47. In one case a man asked a druggist for treatment for a swelled foot. The druggist said it was the gout and gave him a liniment to rub on. The man had acute parenchymatous nephritis and died a few weeks afterward. The swelling of the foot was dropsy, due to the failure of the kidneys to secrete urin. The other was a case of carbolicacid gangrene, due to a druggist giving an injured man carbolized vaselin to use on his injury. These would have constituted grounds for suits for malpractise should the patients' relatives have wished to enter

them.

For a long time it was not clear to us what was meant by "medicin pedler." This is explained in the N. A. R. D. Journal of August 5th, on page 898, as follows:

When one considers the present status of pharmacy, the realization comes that these efforts (the U. S. P. and N. F. propaganda-ED. MED. WORLD] have largely been in vain. Instead of pharmacy being an art of exact medicin, and the pharmacist the only dispenser of all medicin, what is found? This, that the country is flooded with the most miserable excuse for medication possible, from the pedler's medicin made in sheer ignorance, up thru dozens of gradations to the ethically (?) advertised secret specialty, and that the prostituted practise is carried on by the most ignorant persons from pedlers (men and women), selling their "cures" from house to house, or in the department stores, up thru a succession of other interlopers to, finally, the dispensing doctor with his cheap, physician'ssupply-house tablets and near-medicins.

The druggists' campaign of vilification of the dispensing physician, exemplified in the last phrase of the above quotation, will hurt the druggists themselves. They recognize, however, that the druggist, in his overweening desire to sell "everything," has done himself and the community harm, in that the public is now so accustomed to self-dosing for every little and many big ills that the habit is one which must now be broken up if pharmacy is to see a return to the "safe and sane" conditions druggists so earnestly desire. "Patent" medicins and cut rates have finally hurt the drugsellers themselves. So we read further along on page 898 above mentioned:

Pharmacists have lacked the courage to tell the people the truth and urge it upon them. They have failed utterly to convince the people that their habit of self-medication was robbing them of millions in money and of thousands in death every year.

It is considered ingratiating to flatter the popular conception of native freedom and independence, money-making schemes, health-defying concoctions, and to deny the need of any precautionary measures, just as do the "peace-at-any-price" advocates at the present time. What is sorely needed in pharmacy right now is an uprising of high-grade pharmacists who can see the truth, who will tell it, and who will insist upon it.

The N. A. R. D. Journal refers to the Eastland disaster and likens it to the condition of drugdom, and says:

Is this disaster, terrible as it was, one bit more heart-rending than the disaster caused to thousands

of people every year by the taking of medicin pedled out by ignorant medicin pedlers? No, it is not near so cruel.

This awful calamity, costing nearly one thousand lives, is not near so cruel as the act of hundreds of quack doctors whose advertising nets are deftly spread to catch the consumptive's dollar; nor has it a tithe more right to be called "wholesale murder"

than have the acts of the abortion specialist whose victims are numbered by the thousands annually.

We heartily agree with the two paragraphs above. The attack on the dispensing doctor is thus continued:

When one considers the cheap and worthless drugs, the hard, insoluble tablets, and the general secret medicins, handed out by thousands of dispensing doctors, who know little or nothing of what they are giving, and who are immune by law from inspection, and the dire results such medication must have on disease, then the Eastland disaster fades into almost utter insignificance.

Not all druggists are of the same opinion as the editor of the N. A. R. D. Journal in regard to dispensing by physicians. Quite different is the attitude of the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. That journal is a professional journal and in its editorial columns takes a professional view of the druggists' occupation. Likewise, the contributions to its pages by druggists and physicians. In the July issue of the latter paper, on pages 784 to 789, Mr. C. F. Nelson offers "A Proposal for the Elevation of the Profession of Pharmacy." In it he does not recommend the passage of any laws to prevent dispensing by doctors. He recognizes the futility of such efforts. He believes it is time for the

druggists to do something else, and says:

The old professional ideal in pharmacy is dead. It died with the advent of the modern pharmaceuti

cal house. We should not try nor should we desire to bring it back. We must set our eyes towards a newer and better light and follow in its path as our fathers before us followed in theirs.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father apprenticed me to a stern and exacting member of the old school-a man who believed that anyone who did not make all of his pills, plasters, ointments, tinctures and even fluidextracts was unworthy of the name of pharmacist. I have vivid recollections of the old back room where all of this "pharmaceutical cooking" went on; of the big black kettle in which we made our lead plasters; of the large percolators for making fluidextract of sarsaparilla; of the way we rubbed and rubbed to incorporate the mercury with the lard in preparing mercurial ointment; of the hours spent in coating pills with balsam of tolu dissolved in ether-but, as I look back on it all now, I can see the many crudities and imperfections that crept in in spite of our professional zeal and We had no way of determining the purity of the ingredients used in making our preparations; no means, except purely physical ones, for testing the strength of the completed product; no machinery to make our pills round and mechanically perfect. products and, therefore, professional enough but We were, in other words, compounders of our own very inefficient as measured by modern methods.

care.

He recognizes the high quality of the preparations made and sold by the pharmaceutic houses, tho most druggists berate them. He says:

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