“In everything else machinery is used, why not in medicine? So the public drops its penny and receives its prescription. It is not difficult to foresee the time when the prescribing chemist [pharmacist] will be a thing of the past. There will, in fact, be no need for him; his shop will be crowded with penny-in-the-slot machines, by the use of which the patient’s weight will be taken, his eyesight tested, his urine examined, his vital capacity ascertained, his muscle power measured, his knee-jerks recorded, his pulse trace taken, and ultimately his prescription written plainly by a typewriter, so that it can be made up by and assistant at a mere living wage, while the chemist, free from all responsibility will take the fee and flourish exceedingly.”

British Medical Journal 1895

Page 223: Medicine and the Reign of Technology By Stanley Joel Reiser
Published by Cambridge University Press
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