CHEMISTS' SUPPLIES.

North Otago Times, Volume CV, Issue 13929, 10 July 1917, Page 1

CHEMISTS' SUPPLIES.

DRUGS NOT IN Tilt] MARKET. The general advance in tin: prices of drugs which begun with the beginning of the war is still -going on in Britain'; and lately the rate of the auvance has been particularly marked in a number of instances.

Some drugs are quite unobtainable I'raii the ordinary distributing houses, the only slocks available consisting of small retail quanities that a few chemists, in whose districts there may lie no demand for such drugs, may happen to have husbanded.'So acnle has this scarcity become that the ordinary relationship of wholesaler to retailer is oc-. casionnlly reversed/and the wholesaler's traveller buys what he can of the scarce drugs from the retail chemists

;■' order to transfer any available sup- ;■';■• from a district where perhaps the panel doctors place particular value on the medicinal virtues of the drug in question.

An extremely scarce product is permanganate of potash (one of the most popular disinfectants), which used to be obtained principally from Germany. Before the war it was sold freely by Ihe lon, bu 1 . now a single pounl would be almost regarded as a wholesale quantity, and would cost about one-third to. onefourth as much as a hundredweight used to cost, Other commonly-used drugs that have become very scarce are sarsaparilla, guaiacum, ammoniacum, myrrh, liquorice root, and areca nuts. Even our supply of Epsom salts has become short because shipments from the United States have been curtailed.

Among the very few drugs the prices of which i are tending downwards are certain synthetic products which lief ore 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 scanty of raw materials and the shortage of labour prices are still greatly in advance of these quoted before the war,