This article by Ray Spitzenberger appeared first in Images for East Bernard Tribune, East Bernard, Texas, 21 July 2022.
The older I get, the more prescription meds I seem to have to take. Not long ago, I was up to six, now back down to five. I do appreciate medical researchers who keep us going when our engine is back-firing, and the bearings need a little grease. But what I’m having trouble with is remembering the names of those prescriptions.
Often, when you go to the clinic, before you see the doctor, the nurse asks you to list the prescription meds you are currently taking. I usually take the generic version of the meds and pronouncing the generic names can make you tongue-tied. The brand names are easier to say. For example, Casodax, the brand name is easier to pronounce than bicaludamide, the generic. (Traditionally, the brand name is capitalized, but the generic is not.)
Worldwide, until the 18th century, doctors called the medicines by their Latin or Greek names. One source I read was convinced they did this so the patient wouldn’t know he was merely being given ground-up herbs, common treatments in folk medicine. In actuality, Latin had been the language of all forms of scholarship since the Renaissance.
Eventually, the American medical community, by the 1950’s, had come up with the system we still have. The drug begins in the lab with an assigned number, then it is given its scientific chemical name, and finally it is given a “generic” name, a procedure that is very involved. If I understand it, and I probably don’t, a prefix is given based on its relevance, and a suffix based on what the med contains or does. When it is finally approved and is ready to go on sale, it is given a “brand name.” They try to see to it that the brand name is memorable and suggestive of its use.
Tamsulosin acquires the brand name Flomax. It is a diuretic (water pill), so you get the significance of the name, — “maximum flow.”
Metoprolol Tartrate acquires the brand name Lopressor. It’s a med for lowering blood pressure. Get it? Sounds like low pressure.
Metaxalone acquires the brand name Skelaxin and is a medication that relaxes the skeletal muscles.
In most cases, the brand name is easier to say and to remember, but I push myself to learn the longer, more difficult generic version. Like Buspirone rather than BusPar.
Somehow medicine names seemed simpler back in the days of my childhood. Not necessarily because it was a good thing, but folks weren’t tuned into prescription meds (and some like penicillin hadn’t been discovered yet), and they had their own names for the medicines they did use.
We called mercurochrome, monkey blood, eye drops, monkey Juice, and gingivitis mouthwash, Gargle.
Mentholatum was known as liniment or heat rub, and in the 1930s and 1940s, you bought it at Medicine Shows that traveled from small town to small town in vehicles which looked like circus wagons. Farmers bought the stuff to rub on their aching muscles.
Medicine Shows also sold dietary supplements which they called miracle tonics. They contained vitamins and minerals, especially iron, in liquid form. My parents bought some, and I couldn’t stand the taste of it!
While I greatly appreciate what my doctors, with their newly developed prescription meds, are doing for me, you can count on me to love the good old days.
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Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.