Pages

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

THE PHYSICIAN'S CONNECTION WITH PROPRIETARY REMEDIES



http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/XLIX/19/1586.extract?sid=c13c0a93-34f9-46d2-a8d3-0ba474fe6901

H. Wiley, M.D.

Read in the Section on Pharmacology and Therapeutics of the American Medical Association, at the Fifty-eighth Annual Session, held at Atlantic City, June, 1907. ...

An important ethical principle attaches to the physician's relations to proprietary remedies. These remedies may be of two kinds. First, remedies whose composition is disclosed and which are true to the formulas or names by which they are known. Such remedies become proprietary articles by reason of invention, discovery or purchase. There is another kind of proprietary remedy which becomes so by reason of secrecy. As a rule these latter kind do not contain any new principle or substance, but make use of well-known remedial agents, simple or mixed in a more or less haphazard way, and to which some fancy or trade name is given.

It is easy to see that a proprietary remedy may in itself as a remedial agent be good, bad or indifferent. There is no reason to doubt the fact that the activity of any drug or remedy will be as great when administered in

No comments: