A Prescription.. Not just a Piece Not just a Piece

Abstract

Historically, according to Black’s Medical Dictionary (32nd Edition), “Prescription� means the written direction given by the doctor to the chemist for the compounding of medicine suitable to a patient’s case. It was long customary to write prescriptions in Latin, a usage which came down from mediaeval times, and which had a parallel in ancient Greece, where the practitioners at Athens are said to have written their prescriptions in the Doric dialect. The quaintest part of this traditional usage lies in the R which heads every prescription, and which was at first probably the eye of the god Horus, a charm used by the ancient Egyptians, and later the sign of the planet Jupiter. It now stands for the initial of the word recipe meaning “take�, and introduces the directions to the dispenser.