For the last 40 years the 'Kring voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie in Benelux' (Society for the History of Pharmacy in Benelux) has been studying the pharmaceutical past, in which the pharmacist, the preparer of medicines from way back, occupies an important place. This historical study supplies some unexpected views of the past and the future. Sarton also pointed this out to us in his 'new...

This article uses evidence from Welsh apothecary shops as a means to access the mechanisms of the "medical marketplace" in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Wales. As a country physically remote from large urban medical centers, and with few large towns, Wales has often been overlooked in terms of medical commerce. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that Welsh apothecaries participated in broad ...

Some important issues in the design of an efficient pharmaceutical supply chain involve deciding where to place the warehouses/inventories and how to route distribution vehicles. Solving appropriate facility location and vehicle routing problems can ensure the design of a logistic network capable of rapid distribution of medical supplies. In particular, both these problems must be solved in coo...

BACKGROUND The common failure of health systems to ensure adequate and sufficient supplies of injection devices may have a negative impact on injection safety. We conducted an assessment in April 2001 to determine to which extent an increase in safe injection practices between 1995 and 2000 was related to the increased access to injection devices because of a new essential medicine policy in Bu...

In order to deliver eye care, many resources have to be in place at the right time: your patients, your staff, your facilities, your equipment, and your supplies. In this article, we focus on how you can manage your supplies to ensure that your eye service runs smoothly. These supplies, or consumables, include every little thing needed in the course of your daily work: IOLs, medicines, gloves, ...

• The Therapeutic Goods Administration determined in November 2011 that dextropropoxyphene should be removed from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. This is consistent with this drug's removal from the market in many other developed countries. • However, dextropropoxyphene is still on the market in Australia owing to a series of appeals made to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AA...

Plastic materials are commonly used for storing food stuffs and medicines. Chemical substances used in the manufacture of plastic goods are found to migrate in the food stuffs used. The migration of UV absorbents and oxidisable matter was found to be more when used for longer periods.

Ethylene oxide is a highly reactive epoxide gas and a direct alkylating agent with chemical properties that make it a potent mutagen and a potential human carcinogen.4 It has been used commercially in the United States since the 1950s for sterilization of medical supplies, pharmaceutical products, and spices. NIOSH estimates that 270,000 workers may be exposed annually, with high levels of expo...