“TRULY, THIS IS AMERICA
Physician, Patient, Pharmacist”
Advertisement by CIBA Pharmaceutical Products, Inc.
Journal of the American Medical Association
November 8, 1947
“THE PHARMACIST draws from hundreds of compounds, and from ingredients for special formulae…is alert always to new products, new forms of older drugs as they become available after exhaustive laboratory and clinical tests.
“In other days, and other lands, the doctor and the druggist were not always colleagues in healing. Differences in skills and in standards between apothecaries, ‘chymists,’ and physicians saw drugs of those days sold even by grocers.
“But in this blessed land the physician and the pharmacist are, in a sense, the right hand and the left hand of medical science. Each a master in his own field, they combine their skills to link the chain of Diagnosing, Prescribing, Compounding and Treating.
“And this is typically American! For it is not by law that they work together. The physician is free to dispense his own drugs. The patient to have a prescription filled at the pharmacy of his choice. And the pharmacist himself free to carry or decline to stock any drug he wishes.
“The fact that, in 1946, more than 336,000,000 prescriptions were written by physicians and filled by pharmacists — more than ever before in America’s history — clearly shows how deep in the confidence between physician, patient and pharmacist.
“Nothing illustrates this friendship more than they typical habit of the doctor dropping in to see a neighboring pharmacist — to talk shop — to discuss a new drug — to report on success and treatment.
“In this, Ciba shares satisfaction. For, from the laboratories of this research and manufacturing company, where medical men, chemists and pharmacologists work together in a similar way, come many of the fine pharmaceuticals American doctors prescribe and American pharmacists dispense.”