Words interest me. Ive been reading them since I was five years old or so, and working with them for profit ever since I sold my first writing while I was in high school.

Which is why I wonder who invents all those unusual names that are hung on brands of medicine.

I see them in advertising in magazines, especially in ones about travel or gardening or entertainment, aimed at a middle-aged audience. They are astonishingly meaningless.

I jotted down a few of them:Cequa, Dovoto, Fanaft, Isbrance, Keytruda, Nexletol, Nuplazid, Prevagen, Rinvoq, Rybelsis, Skyrizi, and XiiDRA.

There is no way most of us could tell that Cequa treats dry eyes, and Fanaft is for schizophrenia. Maybe they teach it in medical school like a foreign language.

It was always like that in a way, but the names on most medicine bottles were not in impossible language when I was a little boy. So I looked into some of the medicines then inflicted on me.

Castor Oil, a nasty-tasting laxative dreaded by little kids, was labeled in plain English, and still is. You can buy a bottle for a few bucks at Walmart. You can buy a castor bean plant and grow your own. And there are places where you can buy a gallon for about 25 bucks. I dont want to think about a gallon.

Aspirin is short foracetylsalicylic acid, which GermanchemistCharles FredericGerhardtcreated in 1853. By 1899, the Bayerfirmhad named it Aspirin and sold it around the world.The wordAspirinwas Bayer's brand name, but, its rights to the use itwere lost in many countries.

You can still buy Father Johns Cough Syrup at Walmart. Another regular potion when I was a kid is harder to find these days.

It started on May 12, 1868, when a patent was granted to Dr. Samuel Pitcher (1824-1907) of Barnstable, Massachusetts, for a cathartic thats ingredients included sodium bicarbonate, but also essence of wintergreen, dandelion, sugar and water. The remedy was first sold as Pitcher'sCastoria.

Read more from the original source:
Of All Things: Medicine names, old and new - Montgomery Newspapers