When I was in college, back in the sixties, I worked part-time in a drugstore in Warren, Michigan.
One day we received a telephone call from the doctor at a nearby clinic. The doctor asked if we could still compound prescriptions. Although most drugstore pharmacists count pills from larger bottles into small plastic vials, they would— on occasion—have to mix a compound as directed by a physician. I don’t know if druggists still do this, but they did back then.
So when the doctor asked if we could do it, I said sure. “I have this patient,” he said, “and he’s been to every doctor I know. He complains about everything, but there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a hypochondriac. Here’s what I want you to do. Take the largest empty capsules you have and fill them with sugar. Make up ten of these capsules. Tell my patient that it’s the most powerful painkiller ever devised. Tell him you can’t even tell him the name of the pill, because it’s experimental. Tell him the ingredients are secret. Tell him it’s so powerful that he can take only one a day. Tell him that it’s a narcotic. Tell him it’s highly addictive. Tell him that it’s so addictive that he can never, ever get a refill. Tell him whatever you want—just so he believes it … Oh,” added the doctor, “charge him a lot, or else he won’t think it’s any good.”
Richard, the night pharmacist, gleefully filled the prescription. He stuck one of every warning label we had on the small bottle. He put two of the bright red skull-and-crossbones “DANGER” stickers on it.
When the customer arrived, Richard took him aside and gravely counselled him on the horribleness and extreme potency of this medication. He gave him explicit instructions not to drive after taking it, not to operate machinery, not to go out in the sun, not to do just about anything.
Sure enough, ten days later the customer called, declaring the sugar-filled capsules the best thing that had ever happened to him.
And although he did beg for a refill, or even just one more of the miracle pills, Richard had to apologize and tell him that, according to the law, we couldn’t do that.
Huntington Woods, Michigan