The prescription of proprietary medicines for the sick : its demoralizing effects on the medical profession.

  • Lindsley, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1826-1906.
Date:
[1882?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prescription of proprietary medicines for the sick : its demoralizing effects on the medical profession. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The Piescription of Proprietary Medicines for the Sick-Its Demoralizing Effects on the Medical Profession.* The subject proposed for consideration is embraced in the following: Resolved, that it is demoralizing to the medical profession, and detrimental to the public welfare, to prescribe proprietary medicines for the sick. In order to discuss the subject intelligently it is first necessary to define what is meant by proprietary medicines. Several terms and phrases are familiar to medical men and to the people as descriptive of medicines. Thus we have patent medicines, often called quack medicines, trade mark medicines, copyright medicines, nostrums, also officinal medicines, and the prescriptions of physicians. Proprietary medicines include several of the above, and may be defined to be any medicines respecting which some person or persons possess an ownership, either of the method of preparation, or of some element in their composition which is secret, or else of some exclusive right to the manufacture or sale by which the medical profession is, on the one hand, kept in ignorance of their full qualities, or, on the other, deprived of such free and unlimited use of them as would be enjoyed from fair and honorable competition in their pro- duction. * * * It is to be shown that the use of the above medicines is demoralizing to the medical profession and detrimental to the public welfare. It follows as a logical corollary that what- ever is demoralizing to the medical profession is, therefore, hurtful to the public welfare, in so far as the well-being of the public is bound up in and dependent upon the well-being of a sound and judicious system of medical administration. The practice of using proprietary medicines is detrimental to the public welfare, in that it tends to arrest and discourage the practice of scientific pharmacy, and so interfering with and preventing the best results which should flow from this valuable aid to public hygiene. It is detrimental to public welfare in that it affords an easy method of defrauding the sick, by obliging them to pay excessive and exorbitant charges for their medicines. It is detrimental to the public welfare in that it obscures and obliterates the distinction between quack medicines and others, so that the public cannot see the line which divides them. It also prevents any just discrimination between quack doctors and those who pre- scribe these quasi quack medicines. And so it destroys the confidence of the people in scientific medicine. It tends to endow quackery with some degree of respectability, but far more to degrade rational therapeutics to the level of bad empiricism. It is demoralizing to the medical profession (and by that I understand the breaking up, disorganizing, and confusing the regular, orderly, and scientific work of the profession)! It is demoralizing, I say, by giving public an unrestricted endorsement to the use of patent medicines. It supplies the retail druggist the strongest temptation, the greatest facilities, and the most logical excuse for prescribing for the ailments of his customers instead of sending them to a physician. It is demoralizing to the profession because it is ruinous to scientific nomenclature, and renders a classification of medicines utterly impossible. What will the next generation of medical men know about Lactopeptine ? Maltine? Vitalized Phosphites ? Celerina? Bromidia? Iodia? Petroleum Syrup? Soluble Phenole ? Malto coca? Hydroleine? Lister- ine ? Caulocorea? Viburnum Compound? and a more innumerable host of mixtures? These are all of ephemeral existence, having no vitality other than what they derive from the ad- vertising pages of medical journals and the newspapers. They are for the most part the inventions of tradesmen, and in no sense represent the growth and progress of medical science. As the medical men of the present day are greatly ignorant of the therapeutics of Hip- pocrates and Dioscorides of ancient times, because we are not acquainted with the nomencla ture of their medicines, so also the doctors of even the next generation, are likely to be ignorant of our therapeutics; for the same reason. For not only the names, but even the * From an essay read before the Connecticut Medical Society on May 24th and 25th, 1882, by C A. I indsley, M. D., New H-~ auspices of the Connecticut Medical Society. nuakoieetingr held at New Haven 'y published uader the