Medicine: What the Doctor Ordered

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Though foreign visitors might be surprised to hear it, U.S. drugstores also sell drugs. They sell quite a lot of drugs. More than twelve times every second — almost 400 million times a year — some worried citizen peers down the length of one of the nation's 50,000 drugstores — past the lunch counter, the toys, the plastic raincoats, the hair lotions and tooth powders — and finally catches sight of the little glass booth marked "Prescriptions." To the pharmacist in the booth he hands a slip of paper marked with the...

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