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1923] 48
find that the excuse was so often laid on the variation in size of medicine bottles. If a
prescription is dispensed properly, in such a manner as is consistent with the training for
the examinations of the Pharmaceutical Society, the strength of the solution should not
vary, whatever the capacity of the bottle. One of the newspapers, the "Evening
Standard," Wednesday, 20th February, 1923, certainly summed up public opinion very
well in a leader headed "The Human Chemist," which I take the liberty of quoting in
extcnso, because personally I believe it possible that much of the inaccuracy is due to the
carelessness of assistants.
"The public is apt to forget that there is a great deal of human nature in man, and that
solemn men, like the average chemist, are not immune from ordinary weaknesses. Hence
the shock caused by the assertions of a very wide 'limit of error -in prescriptions, and the
suggestion that one prescription out of every three made up in this country is incorrect.
"The suggestion is hotly repudiated, as might be expected, by the Pharmaceutical
Society, which represents the interests of chemists. Errors, it is admitted, do occur,
but they are hardly avoidable. The chemists are not to blame. It is the medicine bottles,
which are not uniform in size. To the layman this seems a singular explanation, since it
might be imagined that a mixture remains the same mixture, in its ingredients and its
proportions, whether it is put in an eight-ounce bottle or a soup tureen. Indeed, this defence
is really an admission. It confesses that in making up a doctor's prescription the chemist
aims only at approximate correctness. It is ' not easy to go about things in the leisurely
way of a laboratory,' and therefore ' not practicable always to secure strict accuracy in
making up the mixture in a measure and then transferring it to a bottle.
"In other words, the chemist wants to make his living as easily as possible. There
are, no doubt, excuses for him. The public treats the dispensing chemist rather badly.
It will not pay the price of professional service, and, on the other hand, it gives as little
patronage as possible to the chemist as a tradesman.
"But when all allowances are made, it must be said that it is disquieting to read of a
prescription made up by one chemist showing a deficiency of 8 per cent, in a single
ingredient, while the same prescription made up by another chemist showed an excess of
9 per cent, in the same ingredient. It is still more disturbing to learn that errors of
deficiency generally relate to the more expensive drugs.
"I am afraid,' says one expert critic, ' that most of these errors result from deliberate
profiteering.' The charge is so serious that it behoves the Pharmaceutical Society to offer
something more than a denial in general terms. We hesitate to believe that in a matter so
vitally affecting health, and perhaps even life itself, members of a highly responsible craft
can admit such considerations. If there is such a form of profiteering, it is surely the most
immoral kind of profiteering conceivable. Not only is it a fraud on the public, the worse
because the average member of the public cannot possibly check it. It may be easily a
serious crime.
"Yet the words of an expert on the staff of the Public Analyst for the County of
London cannot be dismissed too lightly. ' When there is anything wrong,' he says, ' it
is usually intentional.' The average dispenser is well trained, or he would not have been
able to satisfy the tests of the Pharmaceutical Society.
"There is, therefore, a case to be met, and we cannot see that it is met by the statement
that ' a chemist, like other employers, is dependent on his employees ' and that ' it