Elixirs, Tablets and Salves

At this point, I'm more than five years retired from the ER, and yet it is still a part of me. I see the ads for various drugs, and am glad I no longer have to deal with parents pestering me to prescribe one of them for their child. Some days it was difficult enough just to choose a simple medication.

Elixirs, Tablets and Salves.   

Cellulitis on a baby's buttocks.

His mother late for work

keys in hand, waiting

for me, the sorceress,

to settle on a fitting drug.

The book of potions grows

fatter each year

as do warnings portending

all manner of rash and tic and death.

An admonition from me

to take all medicine as instructed.

But will they?

And why

does the eye of newt

now carry a Black Box Warning?

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor