The drug trade in foreign countries : vol. XIV : reports from the consuls of the United States upon the laws and regulations governing : 1. the drug business : 2. druggists v. pharmacists : 3. exports of drugs and chemicals : 4. imports of drugs and medicines : 5. sale of drugs and medicines in lay stores : 6. disposal of prescriptions : 7. renewal of prescriptions : 8. practice of pharmacy / issued from the Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Department of State.

United States. Bureau of Foreign Commerce

Date:: 1898

Credit: The drug trade in foreign countries : vol. XIV : reports from the consuls of the United States upon the laws and regulations governing : 1. the drug business : 2. druggists v. pharmacists : 3. exports of drugs and chemicals : 4. imports of drugs and medicines : 5. sale of drugs and medicines in lay stores : 6. disposal of prescriptions : 7. renewal of prescriptions : 8. practice of pharmacy / issued from the Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Department of State. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

336/428 page 330

$law. No census of the liviiij^ is taken and no estimate of tlie death rate ever made. 'J'he conditions of existence in health and disease of the population form no part of the duties of the executive, and it is not, therefore, sur])rising if the.\' make no voluntary efforts in what they consider works of supererogation. 1, 2. THE DRUG BUSINESS AND PHARMACY. The Government has at diiTerent times issued orders that no man shoukl iiractice the profession of a doctor or undertake the business of dispensing drugs and medicines without first passing an examination to prove his qualifications, but as no penal consequences attach to the violation or evasion of the orders, they rather increase than diminish the abuse they were intended to cure. Medicine and chemistry have been for a i^eriod of nearly forty years an important branch of study in the Koyal College at Teheran, and many of the students have acquired some surgical and considerable pharmaceutical skill. Yet in the practice of tlieir profession their acquirements are of very little advantage when brought into competition with the arts of the empiri- cist. As a rule the latter does not prescribe the drugs of foreign preparation, except such as have become common by general use, such as salts, senna, quinine, etc. A prescription from a native practitioner will frequently contain forty or fifty different substances, in root, bark, flower, seed, fruit, and stem, which must undergo a process of prepara- tion embracing nearly all the methods of extraction known to chemists. Infusion, decoction, roasting, baking, distilling, jDounding, peeling, paring, scraping, have all to be resorted to, and when compounded with their bitters, acids, salients, sweets, the patient will in the course of twelve hours have to take a quantity equal to a gallon or more. The herbs to form these curious mixtures are sold at the native apothecaries, who, however, are allowed to keep sucb dangerous drugs as opium and arsenic, and as these stores are frequently in the hands of boys scarcely removed from childhood, accidents are of common occurrence. The State forbids the sale of these to children, but the order is rarely observed. There are probably over 200 of these small establishments in Teheran, and only about a dozen of such as deal in the ordinary foreign drugs and are able to dispense a jjhysician's pre- scription, with the exception of pharmacies connected with the Ameri- can medical mission. 3, 4. EXPORTS AND IMPORTS. I can not find that any American drugs, patent or proprietary medi- cines, are imported to Persia. I have not the lease reason to believe that any American medical preparations are imitated in Persia. The necessary appliances for these operations do not exist. The drugs exported to other countries, and possibly to a small extent to the United States, consist of opium, and possibly some mor-$

Licence and re-use

Contents