VITAMINS

EDITORIAL VITAMINS The advertising of Vitamins by radio and press has increased until the listening and reading public is subjected to a veritable bombardment of propaganda for one brand or another. Vitamins are definite therapeutic agents. That the public is unfamiliar with their specific indications and optimum dosage hardly needs to be emphasized. That the commercial advertisers are more interested in making sales than in fitting the remedy to the malady hardly needs to be questioned. We believe that if the physician is to keep faith with his patients, it is his duty to determine as far as possible the exact qualitative and quantitative requirement of Vitamins in the particular case; to acquaint himself with the formulas and potency of the various products available; and to dignify his recognition of the patient's requirement by writing a prescription. Clinical and experimental research on Vitamins has been extensive, and information concerning the therapeutic value of and the indications for every known Vitamin factor is readily available in medical literature. Reliable pharmaceutical manufacturers will furnish to physicians accurate information concerning their products. Simply to prescribe Vitamins without specifying component factors or dosage, or to prescribe a certain brand of one or more Vitamins without first determining that its formula is optimum for the patient and telling him that this and no other will meet his requirement, fails to impress upon him the fact that Vitamins are not all alike, not a cure-all, and that only the physician is qualified to prescribe for him. Leaving the choice of the Vitamin product to the druggist or to the patient encourages the indiscriminate purchase and use of these valuable therapeutic agents. Indolence in the practice of therapeutics encourages the spurious commercial propaganda which already amounts to a money-making racket in the sale of Vitamins. Let us put an end to our indolence and to the Vitamin racket! R.C.M. 372