Blank Prescriptions

The National Commission on Law Observance & Enforcement was kind to U. S. Medicine. Ever since liquor was nationally regulated, doctors have carped at the rules which limited them to 100 liquor prescriptions per 90 days and directed them to prescribe no more than one pint of "spirituous liquor'' or one quart of "vinous liquor" to a patient in any ten days. The Wickersham Commission recommended that those restrictions be abolished (TIME, Feb. 2).

The Commission also recommended that doctors be freed from the unethical requirement of publishing the patient's ailment on the prescription. Promptly James M. Doran, Commissioner of Industrial Alcohol, ordered his agents to act accordingly. The individual regained the privilege of keeping his ills secret.

The U. S. Department of Justice and the Treasury Department were also courteous to Medicine during the 20 months the Wickersham Commission performed its research. Federal agents were cognizant of a familiar practice of certain doctors in every city. Many a doctor uses few or none of his liquor prescriptions for patients actually or nominally ill. But many a doctor has signed in blank the balance of his prescriptions, giving a fictitious patient's name. Many a doctor has vended such legalized prescriptions to druggists or bootleggers at from $1 to $1.50 per blank. On the authority of such falsified prescriptions tipplers have been enabled to buy safe, Government-bonded whiskey at from $3 to $4.50 the pint and brandy at from $4 to $7 the pint. The $400 to $600 which the individual doctor gained yearly is a goodly sum to doctors, who average slightly more than $5,000 income from legitimate practice.

Though Federal officials knew of this medical traffic, they refrained from annoying the profession while its demands for professional discretion were before the Wickersham Commission. Last summer only a few doctors were arrested for thus falsifying prescriptions. These arrests should have been a warning to the entire profession. As a warning they failed. So last week the hand of the law stretched out, slapped down in New York City. It caught: a rogue named Nathan Bernstein, in whose home were 1,432 prescriptions signed by 150 different physicians; a racketeer named Morris Sweetwood, who had 25 cases of whiskey in his hotel room; 13 retail druggists; 47 physicians. Another 396 doctors who had sold their prescriptions for $1 apiece were scheduled for Grand Jury quizzing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.