A subscriber to The Chemist and Druggist once asked, 'Has a customer a right to demand a copy of a prescription from a pharmacist?'He had in his books a copy of a prescription entered in 1860. The original owner had been dead three years, and a member of his family asked for a copy to circulate and do good in a neighbourhood ten or twelve miles away. There being some doubt about the matter, the question was submitted to several experienced pharmacists, and the following paragraphs are the gist of their replies:

The late Mr. F. Andrews (London) was of opinion that it would be perfectly right to decline to give a copy.

The late Mr. Eve (of Messrs. Allen & Hanburys) said the copies of prescriptions are only made for a definite legal purpose and confer no right upon the owner. When copies have become valuable property no reasonable customer would persist in asking for them.

The late Mr. D. Frazer (Glasgow) held that the patient is the owner of the prescription, not the prescriber or the pharmacist. As to the dispenser giving copies of prescriptions entered in his books, each man must judge for himself. The pharmacist should never hesitate to give a copy when requested by the original owner.

The late Mr. W. Gilmour (Edinburgh): Entering a prescription into a prescription-book in no way invests the chemist with any proprietary right in it. Mr. Gilmour added that he would not take the responsibility of trading in any prescription or of giving a copy of it to any but the original holder, or at his request.

The late Mr. Thomas Greenish, then President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, wrote: Prescriptions are copied at the expense of the pharmacist, who has a sole right to the copies, the original prescription only being the property of the patient for whom it was written. To give a copy is a matter of courtesy.

The late Mr. Joseph Ince said: It is probably not legal that a particular recipe should be retained by the pharmacist. But the book of manuscript copied prescriptions is the property of the dispenser- part of his stock- and can be bought or sold. No one but the original owner has even the claim of courtesy to assert in desiring a copy.

The late Mr. W. Martindale (London): The only persons who can show a title of claim to a copy of a prescription copied in a chemist's prescription-book (and these only by favour) are the prescriber and the patient. If both prescriber and patient are dead, the copy is ethically the chemist's in toto. The copy is no longer a prescription.

The late Mr. R. Reynolds (Leeds) said the chemist might refuse to give a copy of the prescription without anyone having a remedy at law against him. To give away valuable parts of his prescription-books, bought as part of the goodwill, would be damaging his future and drawing upon his capital.

The late Mr. G. F. Schacht considered the original prescription itself to be the property of the patient, and the copy of that prescription in the chemist's book to be the property of the chemist. The chemist could scarcely refuse to give a copy to the patient ; but when the latter dies the chemist's one and only obligation ceases, and it rests entirely upon his judgment and his courtesy whether he shall part with a copy to anyone.

The late Mr. W. Southall (Birmingham) said : The copy of a prescription is an assistance to memory, in which no one can claim any right or property but the copyist. The original holder of the prescription has no ownership in the copy. On the other hand, a chemist has no right to dispense any prescription of which he may possess a copy, as being Mr. So-and-so's, without the owner's permission.

Dr. C. Symes (Liverpool) wrote : As a matter of courtesy it is well to give a copy of a prescription when it is required for a legitimate purpose, always holding the right to refuse it if required for the furtherance of quackery or for use to the direct prejudice of the pharmacist possessing it.

Our Legal Contributor brought to bear upon the question the stern views of property, which dispensers are so apt to forget in the handling of prescriptions. He said : The chemist does not acquire the right to use the property of a patient (whose prescription he has copied) as part of his stock-in-trade, for the purpose of making money thereby. The customer has no right to demand a copy from the prescription-book on the ground that he has lost the original prescription. If a customer allows the chemist to use the medicine for various purposes and to take the profit arising from the sale thereof, and this continues for a long course of years, in the absence of any proof to the contrary it would be assumed that the owner had given the chemist a general right to make up the medicine for his own profit.

It is not difficult to deduce from these opinions (which still express the common view) two sound business tenets:

(1) The chemist's prescription-book is his own property, created, apart from legal obligations in regard to poisonous remedies, for the purpose of facilitating business with those for whom he originally dispensed the prescriptions.

(2) It is permissible, in some cases advisable, to give copies of the prescriptions to the original holders thereof, but it is not advisable to give copies to others.

Generally, it may be said that it is unwise to encourage the use of a medicine prescribed for one individual by others who suppose that they suffer from the same complaint. It may do harm, and the custom is unfair to prescribers. There are exceptions, it is true, for in most towns some Mr. Smith's tonic-mixture or some Mr. Jones's liver-pills are to be found which are popular long after the death of the prescribers and the original patients. But in such cases we really pass from the dispensing to the retail counter. These general considerations on the legal aspects of the prescription need not be extended here to other points, such as the use of poison-bottles, which are treated later.

Students will observe that in this book, after general principles are expounded, solid forms of medicines are treated first, then those which are administered or used in liquid form. Originally ' The Art of Dispensing' was intended solely as a reference-book for the dispensing-counter, but it has become a popular educational work. It would be possible, no doubt, to systematise the information so that the student might work gradually from elementary compounding to that of the most intricate nature. The Editor is convinced that this would be detrimental to the utility of the book, while it would be an encouragement to theoretical dispensing.