Medicine: Prescriptions

A prescription is something that a physician writes with a gold fountain pen on a little pad with incredible rapidity. "Get that filled," he says with a cheery nod, and drives away in his buggy or his Isotta limousine. The person lying sick tries to read the hieroglyphics scrawled on the bit of paper. Those venomous little curlicues, what do they mean? Of course the chances are that the physician was an honest fellow, but—well, there is something sinister about a prescription, the sick one thinks. It might mean absolutely anything. Suppose the...

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