Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/175

Rh for a two-ounce phial of medicine, is obvious to many who do not reflect on the fact that a great part of the charge is, in reality, payment for the exercise of professional skill. As the same charge is made by the apothecary, whether he attends the patient or merely prepares the prescription of a physician, the chemist and druggist soon offered to furnish the same commodity at a greatly diminished price. But the eighteen-pence charged by the apothecary might have been fairly divided into two parts, three-pence for medicine and bottle, and fifteen-pence for attendance. The chemist, therefore, who never attends his customers, if he charges only a shilling for the same medicine, realizes a profit of 200 or 300 per cent. upon its value. This enormous profit has called into existence a multitude of competitors; and in this instance the impossibility of verifying has, in a great measure, counteracted the beneficial effects of competition. The general adulteration of drugs, even at the extremely high price at which they are retailed as medicine, enables those who are supposed to sell them in an unadulterated state to make large profits, whilst the same evil frequently disappoints the expectation, and defeats the skill, of the most eminent physician.

It is difficult to point out a remedy for this evil without suggesting an almost total change in the system of medical practice. If the apothecary were to charge for his visits, and to reduce his medicines