THE “FREE PASS” PRESCRIPTION.
“A cough mixture, gentlemen,” he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it to the gentleman in waiting, “and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents, if you please.”
In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham’s bill. In the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if “the old and respectable class of apothecaries are to be forever abolished;” and he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: “Is it not a notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of the business in which they are engaged?” Dr. Graham certainly ought to have known.
Druggists are liable to make mistakes,—as are all men; but carelesness and ignorance, one or both, are usually to be found at the bottom of the fatalities so common in the dispensing of prescriptions. I know an old and experienced druggist who sold a pot of extract belladonna for extract dandelion. In the same city, on the same street, I know another who was prosecuted for dispensing opium for taraxicum, which carelesness caused the death of two children. The following mistake was less fatal, but only think of the poor lady’s feelings!
A servant girl was sent to a certain drug store we know of, who, in a “rich brogue,” which might have caused General Scott’s eyes to water with satisfaction, and his ears to lop like Bottom’s after his transformation by the mischievous fairy, she asked for some “caster ile,” which she wished effectually disguised.
“Do you like soda water?” asked the druggist.
“O, yis, thank ye, sir,” was the prompt reply; “an’ limmun, sir, if ye plaze; long life to yeze.”
The man then proceeded to draw a glass, strongly flavored with lemon, with a dose of oil cast upon its troubled waters.
“Drink it at one swallow,” said he, presenting it to the smiling Bridget. This she did, again thanking the gentlemanly clerk.
“What are you waiting for?” he inquired, seeing that she still lingered.