Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 47.

Health and Temperance.

Fallibility of Drug Clerks.

THE result of experiments made by the health officers of an English city to test the accuracy of prescription clerks in drug stores is not likely to increase public confidence in the mixers of medicine. The officers had prescriptions made out by competent men, so arranged that each should include a full dose of some expensive remedy capable of ready and accurate estimation in a mixture. A series of these samples, in which 120 grains of iodide of potassium were prescribed, were found on analysis to contain 122, 120, and 76 grains respectively; the last was, therefore, made up with hardly two-thirds of the active ingredient ordered.

Of three samples which should have contained 16 grains of sulphate of quinine, one contained 9 1/2 grains, or less than two-thirds of the prescribed amount; another sample, which should have contained 40 grains of sulphate of quinine, had but 30 grains. As the quantity in most of the samples fell below the amount prescribed the chief fault with the prescriptions was not so much the risk incurred in administering them to patients as that they defrauded the applicants out of a part of their just dues.

Drug clerks are not infallible, and if they err sometimes it is better, no doubt, that they should err on the safe side. The public, however, has a right to expect absolute accuracy in the matter of prescriptions, and no other standard than that should be thought of for a moment by those who deal in drug mixtures. The terrible results of carelessness in this regard are too common to need further comment.—Sel.