BEASTLY TALES

THE CHEMIST

We all need a chemist, from time to time,
It used to be for prescribed medicine, so sublime,
Nowadays it can be for many other things,
Just so long as the cash register rings.
But even that has largely changed,
Most payments now are “plastic”, far ranged!
In America they were linked to Drug Stores,
Often containing Soda Fountains, not for bores.
Diet aids, Cosmetics, Sunglasses, you name it,
Toys, hats, health foods, and more, all declaim it.
To be most decidedly different from early days,
As with everything else, progress does amaze.

Now, lets go back a decade or six,
The Chemist may have been the Pharmacist.
Mortar and Pestle were ready and waiting,
To fill a prescription, most elevating.
The Pharmacist would prepare from scratch,
Prescriptions for most anything you’d catch.
Powders, pills, potions and creams,
Anything you’d conjure up in your dreams,
And the most absolutely difficult thing of all,
Was to decipher, on the prescription, the doctor’s scrawl.
It used to be with no exception,
That doctor’s handwriting would be a deception.
To anyone attempting to read a script,
Except the pharmacist in his dispensing crypt
It seemed that doctors in medical school,
Suffered broken hands, as a general rule.
There is just no other ready explanation,
For such a universally bad handwriting station.

Should a chap require an item of a more intimate sort,
To early chemists it was useful to resort,
To peaking through the window to spy the chemist at the front,
To avoid having to ask the female staff, to be blunt,
For such items. Thought compromising by most.
Nowadays, there are shelves of them, from pillar to post.

There seem to be such greater demand these days,
For prescriptions, particularly for the old and greys.
The population has increased a lot,
People living longer before burial plot.
So it’s just as well that scripts are filled,
From medications in boxes, their contents billed,
All the chemist need to do, is attach a label,
With dosage instructions, for Fred or Mabel.
Have you noticed, even today items are put into brown bags.
And always, always, secured by sellotape tags.

Enter now, one Peabody Styles,
He had walked for miles and miles,
To reach a chemist in his city,
It wasn’t big, which was a pity.
He was searching for vitamin B12,
The attendant along loaded shelves did delve.
“We only have Vitamin B6” said she,
“I don’t know where any vitamin B12 could be.”
Peabody stopped and thought a while,
“I’ll take it” he said with a wicked smile,
“If I take two B6 tablets in one dose,”
“I’ll have B12, or something close!”
The attendant looked at him, bemused.
She was considering what he’d said, confused.
“I don’t think that is quite right, Sir,”
Peabody glanced at her, his mind in a blur
“Then give me a bottle of Vitamin B4,”
“I’ll take three of them, and be out the door.”