Description

Prescription book of the Berthier Pharmacy (successor to Sacquépée) - PARIS

Volume 2: 1949 to March 1953

Volume 2 of 4 available from these official records, originating from a former Parisian pharmacy, which trace twenty-five years of medical history, from the Liberation to the 1970s. Far from being ceremonial documents, these prescription registers are authentic working tools, marked by the urgency of everyday life and the evolution of pharmaceutical science.

The prescription register was the mandatory legal register in which the pharmacist had to transcribe, day after day and without blanks or deletions (in theory), all magistral preparations and medicines containing dangerous substances.

This second volume opens on 24 May 1949. It is still the golden age of customised preparations, and pharmacists still spend a large part of their day measuring, mixing and pounding. The prescription book serves as a technical memory: each line is a precise recipe (syrups, powders, potions) associated with a patient or rather a doctor.

Those based on poisonous substances such as belladonna, henbane or opium had to be highlighted in red for better control.

Since the 1916 decree, substances had been classified in tables (A, B, C). The prescription book was used to monitor toxic products (Table A) and narcotics (Table B).

It contains substances that fascinate us today: opium, cocaine, morphine, belladonna, arsenic, etc., but which were commonly used in preparations at the time.

Each line had to include the name of the doctor, the name of the patient, the date and the exact composition of the preparation. In fact, in the event of poisoning or suspected addiction of a patient, the police or pharmacy inspectors would come to check the prescription book to see who had prescribed what.

The first pages are authenticated by period revenue stamps and the initials of the Police Commissioner, so all the pages were stamped and could not be torn out.

An added bonus of this volume is that you can see the handwriting evolve; the new pharmacist's calligraphy is less refined than that of his predecessor!

Dimensions: 32.5x25cm - Weight: 2.9kg

Condition: used