Pheroduloxetine or HeadAche ++ ?

After a long-time, I fell sick. Quite Obviously, I went to the doctor next-door. She checked my downbeat-pulse, Investigated the inner depths of my infected-throat, Wide-opened my burning-eyes and Inspected my inflammated-nose too.

After pausing for a minute or so, she pulled out a sheet of paper from her prescription pad and wrote the medication. I took it to the near-by medical shop who, after seeing the medication, with a smile, asked me : " Viral Fever ? Pain in your throat ? Burning eyes ?"

I said, "Yes ! Yes ! Yes !". I got the medicines after paying Rs 250 to them. That too For just 12 tablets and a nasal drop bottle. Add to it Rs.100 which is the doctor's consultation fee. 100 Rupees for 5 minutes roughly. The Doctor gets money from both the patients and the Medical companies for prescribing their brands. And still McKinsey thinks they are the premium consultancy providers.

I quickly ran through the medication list. The Product-Names were like this :

1) Chloromycetin
2) Coscopin Linctus
3) Ranitinoxodinane

Add to it the most reprehensible hand-writing of the doctor. Altogether (names & handwriting) it was like an Indian Reading a German/Latin book from inside a poorly lit room. Or Like browsing an extremely busy and Slow web-site using a pre-celeron processor waala computer. But then Why do doctors always have a bad handwriting ? May be because the doctors do not want their patients to Mug-up the list and avoid coming to them the next time. But even if their writings were good, do you think one can ever mug-up and remember names like - methylphenidate or tranylcypromine ? Mind it - Chloromycetin is just a brand name. It has scientific name which is much more trouble-some.

And if at all we take the pains and mug-up the name Methylphenidate, and while telling shop keeper, by mistake , we say methylphendiate, We are gone. The former may be for curing infertility and later may be for aborting the hard-earned embryo. So a small mis-pronounciation or mis-spell can turn the world upside down.

If at all we had names like Lux, Ponds or Babool for our medicines, Life would have been much simpler - My mom would have asked me to get 8 lux tablets whenever she was sick. Or my dad would have asked me to get a tube of Ponds for his knee pain. Or I'd have myself bought myself a Liril whenever i got a viral fever. Even if I say Luxe or Luxi, The product could still be uniquely identified. Unlike the Methylphenidate story.

I understand the need for scientific names. I do not know what is Azadirachta indica. But if you say a four letter word called "N-E-E-M", I'll understand what it is. Scientists can use Azadirachta indica (neem) or Rosa centifolia parvifolia (Rose) or Erianthus ravennae (Grass) to raise their self-esteem and differentiating them from the mere mortals. But why is a common man like Arun or sidin or neha or Salman Khan or Farah Tasneem be made to suffer because of these stupid medicines whose scientific names as well as the Brand names are equally absurd ? We'd like to have more of Nirmas or Wheels or Surfs or Moods or Close-ups for that matter.

Why is Arun Called Arun ? He could have been called "Torjiyosudo Bapvilmancidex". But the purpose was to easily address him and remember his name , right ? Then this rule should apply to medicines also.

Now a word of praise for we engineers. We make it a point to name things simple keeping in mind the common man. We have antennas, Fan regulators or Motors or Processors which even a doctor can understand. We have CD, DVD, iPOD or LAN which are all simple. We could have named the Fan regulators as "Silicon doped Motor speed inductors" which we did not do.

Now its your turn for comments. Have a great day folks.
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