Deep Pharmacopoeia

Reflections on the Challenge

Adopt the fingers gesture of 'zooming in' on encountering product descriptions or accepted narratives, to explore beneath the surface claims. Consider if they are true, emotionally appealing or addictive.

• Experiences

  L had looked at the website of a local NHS Medical Centre, which did not entirely refect reality. The website included a mission statement focused on patient empowerment and environmental well-being, accompanied by cheerful cartoons of smiling poeple. Yet to communicate with the centre, it was necessity to phone at a precise time with limited chances of getting through, prolonged waiting times, and discourteous communication. Also the artist credited with the cartoons was stated to be a patient, but in fact was a professional artist based in a different part of the country.

  N said that he had started to research the life of A E Housman, as a talk about the poet was coming up at his club, and found that contemporary interpretations often emphasised Houseman's repressed homosexuality and speculated about his private life. N noted that such perspectives might overshadow the poet's contributions, reducing them to mere reflections of societal biases rather than expressions of the human spirit.

• Responses

  N said there was pressure in society that everybody conformed to a particular perspective in the world, and he thought this was very dangerous. T talked of people being cancelled for having the wrong views. L said that Gurdjieff had described somebody as having been anathematised.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 30

• Passage

  Thereafter our highly respected analytic-chemist takes from his table a form on which official title is indicated and writes:

  “The powder sent to us for analysis proves to be, according to all the data, Dover’s powder. The analysis showed it to contain…” And he copies a formula from his German pharmaceutical guide, deliberately increasing or diminishing some of the figures, but increasing or diminishing them of course only very slightly so that they may not slap you in the eye.

  ...The form thus written is dispatched to him who sent the Dover’s powder, and the famous analytic-chemist himself is quite at peace as no one knows that he has made no analysis at all...

• Discussion

  N highlighted the lack of accountability and the chemist's security in knowing that no one could double-check his work, comparing it to how evidence can be destroyed to prevent verification.

• Passage

  Personally, in my handling of these remedies for many years, a definite opinion has been formed in me that none of the remedies known to contemporary medicine can be of any use at all without faith in it.

  And faith in a person concerning any remedy arises only when the given remedy is known and when many people say that it is very good for a certain illness.

  It is just the same with this powder of ours; once it is called Dover’s powder, that is enough, because everybody already knows it and many people often say of it that it is excellent for coughs.

  And besides, speaking candidly, our new composition of Dover’s powder is much better than the real one made from the prescription of Dover himself, if only because it contains no substance injurious to the organism...

• Discussion

  N mentioned the placebo effect, that belief in the remedy's effectiveness is more important than its actual ingredients.

• Passage

  But from the powder made from our prescription this would never happen, since it contains none of that opium or any other substance harmful to the organism.

  In short, my esteemed Doctor, every one ought, when walking in the streets, to shout from the bottom of his heart: “Long live the new prescription for Dover’s powder!”

• Discussion

  N described the historical promotion of addictive substances, making this celebration of a non-addictive alternative particularly poignant.