One thing is certain in the relations of doctor and druggist, viz., the time is not far distant when the doctor will either dispense his own drugs or will boycott every druggist who counter-prescribes or sells patent medicines. The profession will not go blindly on forever, carrying grist to the other fellow’s mill.
Next we must contend with the proprietary medicine fakir. The doctor’s experience often breeds a lack of confidence in his remedies, and his materia medica narrows year by year. Yet his patients clamor for relief, and in despair the doctor receives, with open arms, the fakir who agrees to furnish him with speedy cures.
Behold the result. The pharmacopeia is fast drifting into the valley of dead lumber. It is no longer necessary to know anything of materia medica and therapeutics—the fakir attends to all that for us. We are no longer offended by the gratuitous insult offered us by the proprietary medicine fiend, who knocks at our door, and, with the implied insinuation that he furnishes brains for the medical profession, clutters our office tables up with samples, the labels on which tell us all about diseases and the only preparations that will cure them. Pah! How most of them smell! And what a nuisance they are.
But the fakir has done his work well. He has evolved the ready-made doctor—man of all work, aye, slave to the fakir. How gently flows the current of Dr. Readymade’s professional life. No more incurable cases. No more midnight oil—for why should he be a slave of the lamp? No more worry. No more care. No more expenditures for books, journals and instruments. All the doctor has to do nowadays is to read the labels on the bottles and boxes of samples the fakir brings him. Does the patient complain of stomach disturbance? He is given “Stomachine.” Are his kidneys working overtime? “Kidneyol” is the proper caper. Is there a pain lurking somewhere in his economy? Give him one of these pretty little tablets with a hieroglyph on it, which nobody knows the composition of—so the firm that makes them claims. Oh, the practice of medicine is so easy nowadays. Ready-made diagnosis and treatment—what could be simpler?
The proprietary medicine fakir begins his little song by assuring the physician that his wonderful preparation is for the use of the profession only. He is trying to introduce it “along strictly ethical lines.” He has given the preparation a fanciful name and marked it with a special design “for the protection of the physician, who, of course, wants to know that his patient gets just what is ordered.” What an imbecile the doctor is. The chief objects of the special name and hieroglyphic design are:
(1) To induce the physician to order the preparation frequently, the name being catchy and easy to remember.
(2) To let the patient know what is ordered, so that he can prescribe it for himself and friends without the aid of a doctor.
Having popularized the preparation in this manner, the proprietary medicine man often advertises his wares directly to the public via the secular press. If the profession protests, the wily medicine man says: “Well, you indorsed it; the profession uses it; hence it is a good preparation and a benefit to humanity. Go to, you are bigoted and narrow-minded.”
Now, brethren, while the foregoing remarks are fresh in your minds, try and recall the facts regarding “Scott’s Emulsion” and the “Midy Capsule.”
Not all proprietary medicine men take the newspaper route—they don’t have to. The catspaw doctor does his work too well. Witness the “little joker” anti-pain tablet already mentioned. Probably ten times as much of this preparation is self-prescribed as is prescribed by physicians. It unquestionably contains drugs that should be taken only under medical advice, and yet physicians prescribe it in a manner which leads directly to self-prescribing by the laity. Is it possible that the Pharmacopeia offers no agent of equal or better merit? Has the manufacturer more wisdom than all the ages past—to say nothing of the present age of progress? Or is this an age of medical progress, anyway?