A Safe Prescription

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jul 7, 1904

A Safe Prescription

ALL physicians know what a placebo is, but many druggists do not. It is a harmless or inert remedy which we are sometimes obliged to give to nervous patients who need no medicine, but who think they must take something,—bread pills, colored water, etc., placebos; the word “placebo” means in Latin “I will please.” The following placebo is reported to have cured a large number of neurotic and cranky women of their imaginary ills: it was prescribed for one court lady by Napoleon III’s physician, and was greatly in vogue by the grand dames de la cour. The ingenious prescription is as follows:—

R;   Aqua fontana..... 100 Grms.       Illa repetita....... 45 “       Eadem destillata... 12 “       Hydrogenii protoxidi 0.5 “       Nil aliud........... gtt VI! Sig.— One drop in a teaspoonful of           water thrice daily.

I translate the ingredients into English: (1) Spring water; (2) the same repeated; (3) the same distilled; (4) hydrogen protoxide (H² O) [water]; (5) nothing else. Had the demon of curiosity not taken possession of the grand dame, she might have gone on to her last day praising and presenting to her friends the great prescription of the famous Dr. N. But she could not resist the temptation. She wanted to know what the wonderful ingredients were. She presented the prescription to numerous physicians and pharmacists, but they evaded a direct answer, or said that those were rare medicaments, the nature of which she would not understand. At last she found a druggist, who, for a considerable sum of money, revealed the fatal secret. The wrath of the grand lady against the physician can be better imagined than described.—Critic and Guide.