In Some Instances Most Commonly Used Drug “Out of Sight”. If you purchased a pound of carbolic acid a little over a year ago for twenty cents and the druggist asked you to pay $2.00 for a pound you bought today, would you not do some rapid calculating and wonder just how much profit the druggist was making? Most likely you would unless you were posted on the advanced price of drugs. “The price is gone up on account of the war,” is a statement that is worn almost to a frazzle since Europeans nations have been engaged in conflict. In some instances manufacturing firms have adopted this slogan to advance prices on products that were in no way depending on the nations at war but the druggist is not only confronted with the problem of advanced prices but with the scarcity of the drug which had formerly been imported from Germany. In some instances there is no prospect of securing the drug, and while the foreign chemical factories have no output, the United States as well as the rest of the world is threatened with something like a chemical famine. The solution of the problem, the druggists and the physicians who dispense their medicines, say, is not an easy one. It is either go without the much needed drug, use more or less unsatisfactory substitutes, or develop chemical industry in the United States. If you are paying twice as much and even more than twice as much for an ounce of medicine that contains some of these very expensive drugs, there seems no help for it. Among some of the drugs that are used as an element in medicines that are included in the advanced price list is acetphenetidin, which is a derivitive of carbolic acid which has advanced in price in a year from $1.17 a pound to $20.00. Potassium bromides used in nerve sedatives from 51 cents to $3.25. The iodides given in blood diseases, has advanced $1.00 a pound. Saccahrin which is a chemically made sweeting used in the treatment of diabetes which was purchased at the druggist a year ago for $1.80 a pound now is quoted at $11.00. Santonin prescribed in medicines for children who have worms, has advanced from $35.00 to $55.00 a pound and thymol used largely in the treatment of a specific worm disease, as hook worm, is eight times higher in price now than fifteen months ago. Asperin used largely in rheumatism, novocaine, a local anaesthetic and prescribed in eye treatment, digitalis, a heart tonic, and physostigmine salts, used in ocular troubles, and practically unavailable now. Salvarsan adapted to constitutional blood diseases of syphilitic origin has brought enormous prices in some instances, due to a scarcity. The scarcity of quinine which is used so largely in malarial districts, was for some time very alarming. The Evening Kansan-Republican, Newton Kansas. Monday, December 6, 1915. Page 6.
