A code of medical ethics : with general and special rules for the guidance of the faculty and the public in the complex relations of professional life / by Jukes de Styrap.

  • De Styrap, Jukes, 1815-1899.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A code of medical ethics : with general and special rules for the guidance of the faculty and the public in the complex relations of professional life / by Jukes de Styrap. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    88/100 (page 84)
    c»ap, hi. pleases, and the patient the right of perpetually disposing of it, is one so wrong in principle that it demands from the profession greater attention than it has hitherto received. It may, therefore, be well to state that a prescription is neither more nor less than a written order, or direction, to the pharmacist to furnish or compound medicines for the use of the patient, and undoubtedly remains the property of the author; and neither the patient, nor the pharmacist has any right to use it, excepting for the case and purpose specified :—for although, as Professor Ordronaux has justly remarked, the party paying for the prescription has an indisputable right to the personal use of the formula, he acquires thereby no absolute property in it. That he may use it personally, as often as he pleases, cannot be doubted— for the use is precisely what he purchased : but he has no right to give it to others. The respective rights in a pre- scription, therefore, may be thus briefly defined :—that the physician, as the author, has a literary property in the com- position of the formula, and the right to dispose of the use of it to a patient without invalidating his title to the original ownership ; that the pharmacist by compounding the same acquires no claim whatever thereto, other than as a record, or justification for dispensing it—in line, his right is simply that of a custodian ; whilst that of the patient pertains only to its individual use—and a contrary practice is neither honourable nor honest.