Feb. 13.
The welcome announcement that the Health Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Council has endorsed in principle the Medical Board's resolution that compulsory registration of medical practitioners in the Settlement should be enforced as essen as possible will serve to focus added attention upon the need for a more adequate measure of control over the operations of druggists and pharmacists. Both, subjects are of paramount ime Portance, forming as they do two outstanding aspects of the one vital problem of safeguarding the health of all who dwell in the city, and that a large body of well-informed public opinion is keenly interested in pressing forward towards a solution of the question is proved by the considerable number of letters dealing with this matter which have recently appeared in the [correspondence columns of this journal. Correspondents who, from their "professional status, should be well qualified to comment on the points at issue go 80 far as to allege that probably 90, per. cent. of dispensaries in Shanghai are conducted by une qualified persons, and that the importation and sale of pharma ceutical products is, in the great majority of cases, in the hands of laymen. For all practi.
1 purposes, they state, anyone is at liberty to import and retail pharmaceutical articles whether he is a duly qualified chemist lor not, the result being that certain foreign manufacturing con cerns have been encouraged to regard China as one of the few markets in the world which can be safely flooded with any con ceivable variety of medicine, fre. quently of highly problematical value. The charge has been. made that every year large sums fare being spent in China on medicinal goods which would stand very little chance of ever being offered to the public in their country of origin. Members of the medical profession, confess that frequently it is source of grave anxiety to them to ensure that their prescrip. tions, on which the very lives of patients may depend, are actu ly being made up by.compe chemists, The opening of all manner of pharmacies in there: ing numbers, absence those guarantees which arg considered indispensable in other countries, constitutes a serious potential danger to the whole community. Instances are quot. led of "self-styled qualified' chemists who possess only the most rudimentary knowledge of the different properties of the products which they handle every day in the course of their business. In consequence mis. takes in preseriptic ever-present possibility. ingredient may be substituted for another totally different, of Wrong quantities dispensed, thus rendering the medicine dangerous poison instead of an innocuous sedative or stimulant, The fact that patent medicined may be obtained from so many places other than regular phar" Tmacies is in itself disquieting, Many members of the publi¢ would be surprised to learn of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.