We herewith submit the proposition that the medical catspaw is pulling the proprietary monkey’s chestnuts out of the fire, every time he prescribes a proprietary article “protected” by special design and under a term that he who runs may read. The fakir laughs in his sleeve at the profession, and small wonder. It has come to pass that he owns us, and when his impudent agent demands a hearing at our offices we are tacitly given to understand that our time is his by right. Perhaps it is, by right of conquest, for the medical profession seems to be thoroughly subjugated. The distributor of drug samples is always working in the business interests of his firm and himself. How would it do to insist on payment for our time from the agents of some of our irresponsible, mushroom fake medicine factories?
There is another side to the picture. Drug manufacturers—even some of those engaged in the manufacture of quasi-proprietary medicines—have done much for pharmaceutic elegance and convenience. Many of our manufacturers are conscientiously proceeding along ethical lines. We are glad to welcome their representatives and their preparations. But, unfortunately, such manufacturers are a small minority. The physician should be careful how he prescribes the preparations of even reliable firms. Preparations with special and striking names should be prescribed under formula, where possible, and always in such a manner that the patient cannot prescribe the preparation for himself offhand.
We have much for which to thank some of our manufacturers, in the way of elegant and reliable preparations—honor to whom honor is due. We should none the less, however, guard our own interests. The manufacturers cannot always do so, and sometimes will not. There is no objection to secret methods of preparation of medicine so long as the formula is known. The physician should know what he is prescribing. It is an insult to offer him any other class of preparations. When prescribing he should prescribe under a term comprehending the formula of the drug, or under his own cipher. Where the nature of the preparation is such that he cannot do this, the doctor had better look elsewhere for a remedy.
Again we say, if you cannot make a satisfactory division arrangement with a competent pharmacist who will protect your prescriptions, and treat them as confidential, dispense your own remedies.
Never prescribe a proprietary remedy by its trade name. In so doing you advise the patient of what he is taking and in time he will buy it without your prescription or advice. If you are satisfied that the preparation is a good one and really has medicinal merit—which a few of them do—prescribe it, if you must, by formula. Don’t let the patient know what you are giving him.
The money in the practice of medicine is in mystery. People don’t attach much importance or value to things that they know. It is the mysterious that commands their attention—and money. Let a man know that you are giving him a certain proprietary preparation and he values it only at the established market price. Give him the same ingredients in the form of a regular prescription, each item written out in its Latin name with the proper hieroglyphics for quantities, and he will rate you as a wonder worker. Add “aqua, quant. suf.,” and he is knocked daffy.
It’s simply another form of that peculiar trait of human nature which leads the average man to “kick” when his regular family physician charges $5 for making a ten-mile call on a stormy night, when he will travel the ten miles himself and cheerfully pay a specialist $25 for ten minutes’ consultation in the latter’s office.
CHAPTER XIV
CORPORATION DOCTORS
Of recent years many corporations, especially the large manufacturing and railway concerns, have made it part of their policy to employ doctors on contract. At first such jobs paid fairly well. It was to the interest of the corporations to engage men of reputation and they had to pay them. It sounded well, it created a favorable impression, to have it known that the United States Steel Corporation had engaged the celebrated Dr. Curem to attend to such of its employees as might become sick or disabled while in service.