A prescription drug (also prescription medication or prescription medicine) is a licensed medicine that is regulated by legislation to require a medical prescription before it can be obtained. The term is used to distinguish it from over-the-counter drugs which can be obtained without a prescription. Different jurisdictions have different definitions of what constitutes a prescription drug.
"Rx" is often used as a short form for prescription drug in North America. It is an abbreviation for the Latin "recipe", an imperative form of "recipere", meaning "take".
Prescription drugs are often dispensed together with a monograph (in Europe, a Patient Information Leaflet or PIL) that gives detailed information about the drug.
Read more about Prescription Drug: Regulation in United States, Regulation in United Kingdom, Regulation in Australia, Expiration Date, Environmental Problems
Famous quotes containing the words prescription and/or drug:
“I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn’t want all the pills I’ve recommended that’s up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.”
—Javier Pérez De Cuéllar (b. 1920)
“If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism.... The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)