DRUGS NOT IN THE MARKET

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3127, 4 July 1917, Page 6

DRUGS NOT IN THE MARKET

CHEMISTS' DWINDLING* SUPPLIES, '

The general advance in the prices of. drugs which began with tho beginning of; tbe war is still going on in Britain, and lately the rate of the advance has been, particularly marked in a number of instances. . ' Some drugs are' quite unobtainable from tho ordinary distributing houses, the only stocks available consisting of small retail quantities that a few chemists, in. whoso districts there may.be no demand for such drugs,-may happen to havo husbanded. So acute lias this scarcity become that tho ordinary rela-' tionshi'p of wholesaler to retailer is occasionally reversed, and the wholesaler's traveller buy* what ho can of the scarce drugs from the retail chemists in. order to transfer any available supply., from a district where it is not- wanted, to a district where perhaps the panel doctors place particular value on tho medicinal virtues of tho drugs in question. ■ ■ • ■ " . An extremely scarce product is per-" mauganatc of potash (one of the most' popular disinfectants), which used to bo obtained principally from Giermany. Before tike war it was sold freely by the tori, but now n single pound would be almost regarded as st wholesale quantity..and would cost about, one-third to one-fourth as much as a hundredweight used to cost. Other, rommonlv-iised drugs that have become very scarce are sarsaparilla, gnaiacum. ammoniacum, myrrh, liquorice root, and areca nuts. Evon our supply of Epsom' salts lias become short, because 'ship-! ine.nts from the United Slates have been curtailed. . • Among the very.few drugs the prices of which are tending downwards are cer'taiu svnthetic products which before the war were obtained almost exclusively from Germany. Some, of these— notably aspirin, salicylic acid, and phenacctin— are being made on an increasingly large commercial scale in this country, but owing to the scarcity of raw materials and the shortage of labour prices a.r« still greatly in'advance of these .quoted before the war.