ABSTRACT
The one hundred and thirty thousand physicians in America do make the medicines with which they dose their patients: they prescribe. Since every manufacturer deals with the modification of substance, and substance is the business of chemistry, every manufacturer is just exactly to that extent chemical. Chemists readily contrast themselves as professionals with two other groups: allied scientists in fields like physics and biology and physicians. Few chemists believe that their field is outranked in any of these respects by accountancy, biology, architecture, or business. However, physics, and mathematics to a lesser extent, are viewed by as many as half of the chemists as having higher prestige among scientists and as being more securely based upon scientific knowledge. The research that physicians are seen as doing, if any, is mainly in applied pharmacological chemistry, and even then the man who did the actual work is likely to have been a chemist, although perhaps presented to the public as a doctor.
