Pharmacists: Purveyors of Panacea, Or Something Like It

Medicine is important to living a long life.  Doctors are responsible for diagnosing and recommending courses of treatment, but they can’t be expected to make the medicine themselves.  That would be too much to remember and do.  This is where pharmacists come in.

In olden times the doctor was also the pharmacist, or more correctly the apothecary.  This was from a time when few illnesses were understood, so there was still the time to for medical practitioners perform both medical and pharmacological duties.  As knowledge of the living organism and materia medica expanded, it became increasingly difficult for medical practitioners to learn and remember everything.  Soon afterward, specialists in concocting medicines came to be.  The tasks of the modern pharmacist are based on ancient roles, but these are no less important today.

A pharmacist is first a sage of medicinal substances.  A pharmacist needs to know many medicinal substances -- from herbs to metals to synthetic compounds -- in order to know what sickness is treated with which.  Additionally, these medical materials can react and interact with each other in different ways.  Some may counter the effects of another, or they could react and cause harm to the patient.  As it is, a pharmacist stays on guard by analyzing medicines to prevent deleterious effects.  This can save lives by preventing bad reactions, and save money by maximizing effects.

A pharmacist is a precision-oriented artisan.  The production of syrups, tinctures, balms, powders, pills, capsules, and other medical preparations requires strict control of many factors.  Pharmacists are responsible for adding the exact right amount of any given substance, and then prepare the product in a consistent manner.  No bottle must be under-filled and no capsule must be over-packed.  The preparation of these also requires conditions like temperature and sterility to be observed.  A pharmacist prepares medicines for the masses, and he or she does it with precision, consistency, and conscientiousness.  These prevent overdoses as well as under-doses, and improve the health of those concerned.

A pharmacist is an explorer of the exotic and strange.  Medicine advances based on research and discovery; the state of medicinal substances is made to progress by pharmacologists who pass the knowledge on to pharmacists.  By working together, they discover new medicines, their uses, dosages, and any ill effects.  With this new knowledge more lives can be saved, with less expensive and more readily-available drugs.

The last, and perhaps the most familiar of the pharmacist’s duties is their purveyance of panaceas -- or medicines, since a cure-all does not actually exist.  It’s not simply selling the medicines, though.  A pharmacist does what they can to prevent the incorrect dispensation of drugs.  They will not sell drugs to a buyer without a reason to need it.  They are also the last line of defense for spotting any conflicts in prescriptions presented to them; prescriptions may contain many different drugs that could react adversely with each other.  This could happen when a patient has many different doctors who are not in communication with each other.  By staying vigilant, a pharmacist prevents harmful drug inter-reactions and ensures the availability of medicines for those that need them.