Digest Number 1993

[Theresa Partington]

Hi Liz!
Agree with all this.
I medicate all the remedies I prescribe - usually as a weekly 'chore'.
Occasionally I spill the odd drop on my hand, and obviously can't help
smelling them. It doesn't *feel* as though this has been a disaster for my
own prescriptions, but at 20 bottles or so a week I am bound to have taken
some partial simillima or anti-dotal remedies somewhere along the line.
Wonder what is happening there.
Incidentally, Holland and Barrett used to tell people the thin coat thing -
always seemed an odd concept.

Theresa

Liz wrote
don't prohibit patients from touching their own remedy. If the remedy begins
to act through the skin, well so be it - it is for them! However, it is a
social propriety not to touch the remedy for another person - or if your own
hands are contaminated.
I have always understood the medicating of remedies to be rather robust, not
a thin lick of coating, and have never believed it to be easliy rubbed off.
It just doesn't add up to me.
Interestingly, when I give a remedy to one of my animals I do handle it - it
is the only way to get this particular animal to take the remedy - it acts
on him, not me (it is not"my" remedy). But I do wash my hands carefully
before and after.
I believe that some pharmacy staff can become very sensitive to remedies,
because of the nature of their work, and so handling is avoided at all
costs - for their own as well as our safety. However, inadvertant olfaction
may also be an issue here.
Liz