Indiscriminate Drug Therapy

now closed to this country, and this, together with the necessity of conserving foreign exchange and avoiding the waste of shipping space by the importation of non-essential drugs and chemicals, renders the problem of finding adequate alternatives pressing \?Extract from preface to the Extra Pharmacopoeia, volume 1, 1941. Drug economy is surely as necessary to the war effort in India as it is in England. A marked increase in the local manufacture of drugs since war began has certainly helped to relieve the drug problem in India, but many raw materials are scarce and valuable shipping space is still being taken up with certain essential drugs which have to be imported from abroad. Quite apart from drug economy being necessary as a war-time measure, sound arguments can be put forward to show that a reduction in the consumption of drugs would be beneficial to a public made drug-conscious by extensive advertising campaigns. One thing is certain, the patient would not suffer; on the contrary a greater quantity of essential drugs would be available to those who really need them.