Hughesair (Inflection Point)

Apothecaries want to maintain the sponsored monopoly on dispensing over priced drugs, and the medical profession goes along with it as a convenience and to avoid an element of liability and distrust. However, in rural areas where there is no pharmacy, the trusted family physician might still engage in direct dispensing from his office. One might argue that doing so greatly reduces cost and eliminates one more level of communication wherein errors might occur. It certainly reduces red tape. My Dad did this in his early years of practice. He once told me that he dispensed medications in a bottle -- asking the patient to bring in a urine specimen in a week for follow up. "That way I get my bottle back."

My Dad was a physician from the old school. After graduation from U of Illinois’ Med school in Chicago, he did graduate work in microbiology for the meat packing industry and delivered babies in Cicero. He told many stories and I saw some of it firsthand. I followed him around on house calls and hospital rounds, waiting in the car of course from the time I was 4 or 5 years old. The second hand cigar smoke was great and so were the stories. One such tale involved a class mate of his who went into practice in a small town in Texas. Obesity was a problem as it is today and this young doctor had a solution. In secret he cut segments of the readily available beef tape worm and placed them in capsules dispensing them to his obese patients. (Emphatically not recommended) This was highly effective and when the patient became skinny enough he purged them with pumpkin seeds. It was not long, however, before the locals caught on. An outraged citizenry took matters into their own hands; they ta...