Recipes and Rx

Retail prescription drugs in the US are over $200 billion annually. The origin of the Rx symbol comes from medieval time as an abbreviation for a form of the Late Latin word recipere meaning 'to take' or the imperative form of recipe, meaning 'take'.

By the late 1500s it came to mean medical prescription. This meaning lasted until the mid-1700s, when it was also applied to food preparation.

Physicians typically begin their directive with the command recipe, abbreviated to Rx. Other abbreviations used in the medical field for charting are “dx” (diagnosis), “sx” (signs and symptoms), and “hx” (history). Incidentally, females in the US fill almost fifty percent more prescriptions per capita than males.