Pharmaceutical law in safe self-medication

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Pharmaceutical law in safe self-medication is a historical scientific and teaching-methodological book project concerned with non-prescription medicines and the responsibilities surrounding their use. The surviving materials connect pharmaceutical law with medicine information, professional consultation, safety and legal relationships among physicians, patients and pharmacists.

Editions and related predecessors

• 1998: Medicines Available Without a Prescription (editorial English translation; original: Лекарственные средства, отпускаемые без рецепта врача), edited by V.O. Shapovalova and V.S. Danilenko, is identified in the later introduction as a predecessor in the systematization of non-prescription medicine information and associated legal questions. This is a relationship documented by the later book, not a claim that the 1998 work invented the subject internationally.
• 2005: Pharmaceutical Law in Safe Self-Medication: Medicines Available Without a Prescription (editorial English translation; original: Фармацевтическое право в безопасном самолечении: лекарственные средства, отпускаемые без рецепта врача), Kharkiv: Fakt, 800 pages, is cited in the research literature. The named editors in that citation are V.O. Shapovalova, O.V. Stefanov, I.M. Trakhtenberg and V.V. Shapovalov.
• 2010: The reviewed Ukrainian title-and-verso material identifies Pharmaceutical Law in Safe Self-Medication: Medicines Available Without a Prescription (editorial English translation; original: Фармацевтичне право в безпечному самолікуванні. Лікарські засоби, які відпускаються без рецепта лікаря) as a third, revised and expanded edition, Kharkiv 2010, edited by V.V. Shapovalov. The reviewed proof leaves publisher and final pagination blank. Those fields should not be reconstructed from that proof alone.

The 2010 title lists V.O. Shapovalova, V.V. Shapovalov, M.M. Khalin, I.K. Sosin, V.V. Shapovalov (junior), and Yu.V. Vasina. The senior/junior distinction matters: the two V.V. Shapovalov entries must not be silently merged.

Structure and purpose

The reviewed contents organize the material into three substantial areas:

1. General pharmaceutical law and regulation: historical development, supply categories, medicine-control questions and the regulatory environment.
2. Clinical aspects of non-prescription self-medication: medicine information, a formulary-oriented treatment of products and their properties, and attention to psychoactive substances in non-prescription preparations.
3. Legal support for professionals involved in the circulation of non-prescription medicines.

The inclusion of language indexes also reflects its reference-book function. Its intended readers include pharmacy and medical professionals, healthcare organizations, and students in medical, pharmaceutical and legal disciplines.

Why it matters to the research history

The book is evidence of a programme that joined questions normally encountered in different professional settings: what a medicine does, how it can lawfully be supplied, what information a patient receives, and how professional responsibilities are understood. It provides a concrete historical link between the earlier medicine-reference work and later integrated medico-pharmaceutical discussions.

The introduction explicitly limits its scope: it is not a complete collection of legislation or an answer to every difficult self-medication problem. It also rejects replacing the physician with the pharmacist. These qualifications are important and should remain visible when the book is summarized today.

Reading older medicine literature responsibly

The book should be used here as a historical and conceptual source, not as a current prescribing or dispensing manual. Product authorizations, warnings, professional standards and legal classifications can change. Neither a historical non-prescription listing nor a historical discussion of a substance establishes that its present-day use is suitable for an individual.

Public corroboration: V.V. Shapovalov, The study of certain aspects of the modernization of the state of the healthcare industry of Ukraine on the basis of medical and pharmaceutical law, Pharmaceutical Journal, issue 6 (2013), pp. 28–35, references the 2005 and 2010 books. The website upload date is 12 February 2019; do not substitute that upload date for the issue year.

See also: Terms and concepts index · Journal research map · History and research foundations.