Strong Medicine (20 page)

"Just the same, I'd like to hear your version."

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He looked at her inquiringly. "Confidentially? No holds barred?" She

nodded. "That's the way I want it."

"All right then, look at it this way. As we both know, a prescription

drug costs millions to research and takes five, six years before it's

ready for selling. With an O-T-C item, you need six months or less to

formulate the stuff, and the cost is peanuts. After that the big money

goes for packaging, advertising, sales,"

"Teddy," Celia said, "you have a knack of getting to the core of things.

"

He shrugged. "I never kid myself. What we're selling around here ain't

from Louis Pasteur."

"Yet overall, the industry's O-T-C drug sales are shooting up and UP."

"Like a goddam rocket! Because it's what the great American public wants,

Celia. People who've got something wrong with 'em -mostly something minor

which time would take care of if they had the sense to leave it

alone-those people want to treat themselves. They like playing doctor,

and that's where we come in. So if that rocket is going up anyway, why

shouldn't all of us-FeldingRoth, you, me-go up there with it, hitching

to the tail?" He paused, considering, then went on. "Only trouble right

now is, we ain't got firm hold of that tail-we're not getting the share

we could have of the market."

"I agree about market share," Celia said, "and I believe we can change

that. As to O-T-C drugs themselves, surely they have a little more value

than you say."

Teddy raised his hands as if the answer didn't matter. "A little maybe,

but not much. There are a few good things-like aspirin. As to others, the

main thing is they make people feel good, even if it's only in their

minds."

She persisted, "Don't some of the common cold remedies, for instance, do

more than ease the mind?"

"Nah!" Teddy shook his head emphatically. "Ask any good doctor. Ask

Andrew. If you or I get a cold, being on the inside track so to speak,

what's the best thing we should do? I'll tell you! Go home, put our feet

up and rest, drink lots of liquids, take some aspirin. That's all there

is to do-until science finds a cure for the common cold, which is still

a long hard march from here, the way I hear it."

Despite the seriousness, Celia laughed. "You never take any cold

medicine?"

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"Never. Luckily, though, there's lots who do. Armies of hopefuls who pay

out half a billion dollars every year trying to cure their uncurable colds.

And you and me, Celia-we'll be out there selling 'em what they want, and

the nice thing is, none of it'll do 'em harm." A note of caution crept into

Teddy's voice. "Of course, you understand I wouldn't talk like this to

anyone outside. I'm doing it now because you asked me, we're private, and

we trust each other."

"I appreciate the frankness, Teddy," Celia said. "But feeling the way you

do, doesn't it sometimes bother you, doing this kind of work?"

"The answer's no for two reasons." He ticked them off on fingers. "Number

one, I'm not in the judgment business. I take the world the way it is, not

the way some dreamers think it ought to be. Number two, somebody's gonna

sell the stuff, so it might as well be Teddy Upshaw." He regarded Celia

searchingly.. "It bothers you, though, doesn't it?"

:'Yes," she acknowledged. "Occasionally, it does."

'Did the brass tell you how long you'd stay in Bray & Commonwealth?"

"Nothing was said. I suppose it could be indefinitely."

"No," Teddy assured her. "They won't leave you here. You'll have this job

for a year, probably, then move on. So stick it out, baby! In the end it's

worth it."

"Thank you, Teddy," Celia said. "I'll take your advice, though I hope to do

a great deal more than stick it out."

Despite being a working wife and mother, Celia was determined never to

neglect her family, and especially to remain close to Lisa, now five, and

Bruce who was three. Each weeknight, on her return home and before dinner,

she spent two hours with the children-a schedule Celia adhered to no matter

how important were the office papers she brought home in a briefcase for

later study.

During the evening of the day on which she had her talk with Teddy Upshaw,

Celia continued what she had begun a few days earlier-reading to Lisa, and

to Bruce when he would sit still long enough to listen, from Alice's

Adventures in Wonderland.

Bruce was quieter than usual tonight-he was tired and had the beginnings of

a head cold with a runny nose-and Lisa, as always, was listening raptly as

the story described Alice waiting by a tiny door to a beautiful garden, a

door which Alice was too large to enter, and hoping she would find . . .

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a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she

found a little bottle . . . ("which certainly was not here before,"

said Alice), and tied round the neck of the bottle was a paper label,

with the words "DRINK ME" beautifully printed on it in large letters.

Celia put the book down while she wiped Bruce's nose with a tissue,

then read on.

It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise little Alice was

not going to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and

see whether it's marked 'poison' or not." . . . She had never forgotten

that, if you drink much from a bottle marked "poison," it is almost

certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked "poison," so Alice ventured to taste

it, and finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavor of

cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered

toast), she very soon finished it off.

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shutting up like a

telescope."

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high . . .

Lisa interjected, "She shouldn't have drunk it, Mommy, should she?"

"Not in real life," Celia said, "but this is a story." Lisa insisted

firmly, "I still don't think she should have drunk it." Her daughter,

Celia had observed before, was already a person of strong opinions.

"You're dead fight, honey," Andrew's voice behind them said

cheerfully; he had come in quietly and unnoticed. "Never drink

anything you're not sure about unless your doctor prescribes it." They

all laughed, the children embraced Andrew enthusiastically, and he

kissed Celia. "Right now," Andrew said, "I prescribe an end-of-day

martini." He asked Celia, "Join me?" "Sure will." "Daddy," Lisa said,

"Brucie has a cold. Can you make it go away?" "No.,,

"Why not?"

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"Because I'm not a cold doctor." He picked her up and hugged her. "Feel

me! I'm a warm doctor."

Lisa giggled. "Oh, Daddy!"

"It's uncanny," Celia said. "This is almost a replay of a conversation

I had today."

Andrew put Lisa down and began to mix martinis. "What conversation?"

"I'll tell you over dinner."

Celia put Alice on a shelf until the next evening and prepared to take

the children to bed. An aroma of curried lamb floated in from the kitchen

while, in the adjoining dining room, Winnie August was setting Andrew and

Celia's places for dinner. "at did I ever do, Celia thought, to have such

a wonderful, satisfying, happy life?

"Teddy's absolutely right about its being useless to treat colds with

anything except liquids, rest and aspirin," Andrew said after Celia told

him of the discussion in her office that morning.

The two of them had finished dinner and taken their coffee to the living

room. He went on, "I tell my patients, if they have a cold and treat it

properly it will last seven days. If they don't, it will last a week. "

Celia laughed and Andrew poked at a log fire he had lighted earlier,

restoring it to flame.

"But Teddy's in error," Andrew said, "about so-called cold remedies not

doing any harm- A lot of them are harmful, some dangerous."

"Oh, really!" she objected. "Surely 'dangerous' is exaggerating."

He said emphatically, "It isn't. In trying to cure a cold you may make

other, more serious things that are wrong with you a whole lot worse."

Andrew crossed to a bookshelf and pulled down several volumes, their

pages flagged with slips of paper. "I've been doing some reading about

this lately." He turned pages of the books.

"in most cold remedies," Andrew said, "there's a mishmash of ingredients.

One's a chemical called phenylephrine; it's in what are advertised as

decongestants to relieve a stuffy nose. Mostly, phenylephrine doesn't

work-there isn't enough used to be effective ---but it does raise blood

pressure, which is harmful for anyone, and dangerous for those who have

high blood pressure already."

He referred to a page of notes. "Plain, simple aspirin, just about all

medical researchers agree, is the best thing for a cold. But there are

aspirin substitutes, heavily advertised and bought, which con-

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tain a chemical, phenacetin. It can cause kidney damage, maybe

irreversible damage, if taken too often and too long. Then there are

antihistamines in cold tablets-there shouldn't be; they increase mucus in

the lungs. There are nose drops and nasal sprays more harmful than good-"

Andrew stopped. "Do you want me to go on?"

"No," Celia said, and sighed. "I get the picture."

"What it comes down to," Andrew said, "is that if you have saturation

advertising you can make people believe anything and buy anything."

"But cold aids do help a cold," she protested. "You hear people say so.

"

"They only think they help. It's all a delusion. Maybe the cold was

getting better. Maybe it was psychological."

As Andrew put the books away, Celia remembered something another doctor,

a veteran general practitioner, had told her when she was a detail woman.

"When patients come to me complaining of a cold, I give 'em

placebos-harmless little sugar pills. A few days later they'll come back

and say, 'nose pills worked wonders: the cold has gone."' The old G.P.

had looked at Celia and chuckled. "It would have gone anyway. "

The memory, and Andrew's comments, had the flavor of truth and now, in

contrast to her earlier mood, Celia was depressed. Her new

responsibilities were opening her eyes to things she wished she didn't

have to know. What was happening, she wondered, to her sense of values?

She realized what Sam had meant when telling her, "You may have to

suspend your critical judgments for a while. " Would it really be

necessary? And could she? Should she? Still pondering the questions, she

opened the briefcase she had brought home and spread papers around her.

Also in the briefcase was something Celia had forgotten until then-a

sample package of Bray & Commonwealth's "Healthotherm," an O-T-C product

introduced some twenty years earlier and still sold widely as a chest rub

for children with colds; it had a strong, spicy smell described in

advertising as "comforting." Celia had brought it home, knowing Bruce had