Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America

by Jeremy A. Greene, Elizabeth Siegel Watkins

Overview

America has had a long love affair with the prescription. It is much more than the written “script” or a manufactured medicine, professionally dispensed and taken, and worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As an object, it is uniquely illustrative of the complex relations among the producers, providers, and consumers of medicine in modern America.

The tale of the prescription is one of constant struggles over and changes in medical and therapeutic authority. Stakeholders across the biomedical enterprise have alternately upheld and resisted, supported and critiqued, and subverted and transformed the power of the prescription. Who prescribes? What do they prescribe? How do they decide what to prescribe? These questions set a society-wide agenda that changes with the times and profoundly shifts the medical landscape. Examining drugs individually, as classes, and as part of the social geography of health care, contributors to this volume explore the history of prescribing, including over-the-counter contraceptives, the patient’s experience of filling opioid prescriptions, restraints on physician autonomy in prescribing antibiotics, the patient package insert, and other regulatory issues in medicine during postwar America.

The first authoritative look at the history of the prescription itself, Prescribed is a groundbreaking book that subtly explores the politics of therapeutic authority and the relations between knowledge and practice in modern medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421405070
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/14/2012
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeremy A. Greene is an associate professor of medicine and the Elizabeth Treide and A. McGehee Harvey Chair in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the author of Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine and coeditor of Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is a professor in the History of Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950–1970, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Introduction. The Prescription in Perspective
Chapter 1. Goofball Panic: Barbiturates, "Dangerous" and Addictive Drugs, and the Regulation of Medicine in Postwar America
Chapter 2. Pharmacological Restraints: Antibiotic Prescribing and the Limits of Physician Autonomy
Chapter 3. "Eroding the Physician's Control of Therapy": The Postwar Politics of the Prescription
Chapter 4. Deciphering the Prescription: Pharmacists and the Patient Package Insert
Chapter 5. The Right to Write: Prescription and Nurse Practitioners
Chapter 6. The Best Prescription for Women's Health: Feminist Approaches to Well-Woman Care
Chapter 7. "Safer Than Aspirin": The Campaign for Over-the-Counter Oral Contraceptives and Emergency Contraceptive Pills
Chapter 8. The Prescription as Stigma: Opioid Pain Relievers and the Long Walk to the Pharmacy Counter
Chapter 9. Busted for Blockbusters: "Scrip Mills," Quaalude, and Prescribing Power in the 1970s
Chapter 10. The Afterlife of the Prescription: The Sciences of Therapeutic Surveillance
Time Line of Federal Regulations and Rulings Related to the Prescription
Notes
List of Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Elaine C. Stroud

A blueprint for a new standard in the history of health care in America. Prescribed looks to the future and the past to better understand the whole picture surrounding the prescription today. The chapters reflect solid historical research, synthetic analysis, and useful insights for further work on recurring problems.

— Elaine C. Stroud, coeditor of American Pharmacy: A Collection of Historical Essays

From the Publisher

A blueprint for a new standard in the history of health care in America. Prescribed looks to the future and the past to better understand the whole picture surrounding the prescription today. The chapters reflect solid historical research, synthetic analysis, and useful insights for further work on recurring problems.
—Elaine C. Stroud, coeditor of American Pharmacy: A Collection of Historical Essays

Editorial Reviews

Both the health care professional and the consumer will benefit greatly from this topical book. Prescribed describes how the prescription has progressed from a document written in Latin to an electronic text that is the principal dimension of people's current encounters with physicians, nurse practitioners, and other physician extenders . . . Highly recommended.

Choice

The volume is an exceptional collection of stories, which not only reveals the history of the prescription in modern America, but also adds a significant layer to our broader knowledge of pharmaceutical and medical history.

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences - Mat Savelli

There is no doubt that Prescribed is an excellent contribution to the literature, it deserves a wide readership, and it should be incorporated into many classroom reading lists. These are fascinating, well-told stories that elegantly explain why pharmaceutical studies should be an important element in the study of and instruction in the history of medicine, science, and technology, and in history more generally.

Pharmacy in History

A powerful guide that should be in any basic health collection . . . A fine pick for medical, science, and computer collections alike.

Midwest Book Review

This collection may do for the history of epistemology of pharmaceuticals and ideas about drugs what Rosenberg and Golden's Framing Disease did for the history and epistemology of disease.

Social History of Medicine - Dan Malleck

Prescribed provides the reader with a much better understanding of how we have gotten to our current system of managing, and mismanaging, prescription drugs in the United States.

Watermark - Scott D. Grimwood

Prescribed provides the reader with a much better understanding of how we have gotten to our current system of managing, and mismanaging, prescription drugs in the United States.

— Scott D. Grimwood

Watermark

A powerful guide that should be in any basic health collection . . . A fine pick for medical, science, and computer collections alike.
—Midwest Book Review

Prescribed provides the reader with a much better understanding of how we have gotten to our current system of managing, and mismanaging, prescription drugs in the United States.
—Scott D. Grimwood, Watermark

Both the health care professional and the consumer will benefit greatly from this topical book. Prescribed describes how the prescription has progressed from a document written in Latin to an electronic text that is the principal dimension of people's current encounters with physicians, nurse practitioners, and other physician extenders . . . Highly recommended.
—Choice

This book provides a good overview of the major problems relating to prescriptions and detailed coverage of particular matters for those who want to investigate them further.
—Nano Khilnani, Biz India Magazine

The emerging field of pharmaceutical history is well served by Prescribed, an excellent book that examines postwar American pharmacy and medicine by focusing on the act of prescribing.
—Gregory Higby, Journal of American History

This collection may do for the history of epistemology of pharmaceuticals and ideas about drugs what Rosenberg and Golden's Framing Disease did for the history and epistemology of disease.
—Dan Malleck, Social History of Medicine

The volume is an exceptional collection of stories, which not only reveals the history of the prescription in modern America, but also adds a significant layer to our broader knowledge of pharmaceutical and medical history.
—Mat Savelli, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

There is no doubt that Prescribed is an excellent contribution to the literature, it deserves a wide readership, and it should be incorporated into many classroom reading lists. These are fascinating, well-told stories that elegantly explain why pharmaceutical studies should be an important element in the study of and instruction in the history of medicine, science, and technology, and in history more generally.
—Pharmacy in History

From the Publisher

This book provides a good overview of the major problems relating to prescriptions and detailed coverage of particular matters for those who want to investigate them further.

Biz India Magazine - Nano Khilnani

The emerging field of pharmaceutical history is well served by Prescribed, an excellent book that examines postwar American pharmacy and medicine by focusing on the act of prescribing.

Journal of American History - Gregory Higby