Why Is The Abbreviation For Prescription ‘Rx’?

In the world of life science recruitment, many candidates will work at some point with medicines and medical devices, many of which require regulatory approval and a prescription from a medical professional for them to reach patients.

Orders for prescriptions often use the abbreviation Rx (or more rarely the symbol ℞) to represent a prescription in textbooks, official documents and in advertising, but for people who are not doctors and pharmacists, it can be unclear as to what the abbreviation actually means.

The reason for this is that ‘Rx’ does not stand for the word prescription but instead for the Latin word ‘Recipere’, and the reason for this dates back to the very early history of doctors, medicines and the written word.

A Tale Of Two Prescriptions

The division between doctors who diagnose patients and prescribe treatments and pharmacies that dispense medicine has existed since the start of medicine itself, and the prescription started as a simple recipe.

There are initially two types of prescriptions: non-extemporaneous prescriptions and extemporaneous prescriptions.

The former were general recipes used to treat patients with common medical issues of the time, similar to medicines that are available over the counter.

The latter, coming from the Latin phrase ‘ex tempore’ were written on the spot and were often specific to a certain patient. Modern prescriptions follow on from this, although in most cases the pharmacist does not need to mix the medication themselves.

Traditionally, before a modern legal definition of a prescription was established, prescriptions consisted of four parts:

• The superscription, which includes the date and patient information, which precedes the symbol Rx which is shorthand for “take” or a request to the pharmacist for the patient to have a medicine comprised of the following.
• The inscription, which describes the components of the medication, often separating it into the roles of each ingredient, from the main active ingredient, ingredients that help it work more effectively or reduce undesired effects and the method of administration.
• The subscription, which is the dispensing directions for the pharmacist and is typically used for dosages.
• The signature, which aside from having the doctor’s signature also contains instructions for the patient on how to take the particular prescription.

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