[A case of a mispreparation of medicine on Yokohama and the separation of drug dispensaries from the medical practice].

On June 10, 1921, a fatal drug administration case occurred in Yokohama. A nontitled dispenser of drugs with little knowledge about drugs working in a hospital dispensary gave a patient a capsule of strychnine nitrate instead of one containing strychnine hydrochloride. This patient died 20 minutes later. A pharmacist revealed the case to the public. Pharmacists insisted that this unfortunate event occurred because of a current hospital system handling both medicine and drug dispensation. Therefore they argued that the responsibilities of doctors and of drug dispensaries must immediately be separated out of respect for the lives of patients. Pharmacists publicized the importance of separating drug dispensaries from the medical practice through newspapers, magazines, and public lectures. We are quite doubtful about this appeal to the public being effective. We question how many people could understand what the pharmacists were saying under such the era when people were not much educated. It became a great fear to doctors that pharmacists appealed the necessity of the separation of drug dispensaries from medical practice directly to the public.