Note 92 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
The prescription of the physician was formerly called his bill. Johnson, in his Dictionary, quotes from L'Estrange, "The medicine was prepared according to the bill," and Butler, in Hudibras, speaks of
him who took the doctor's bill, And swallowed it instead of the pill.
The story ran that a physician handed a prescription to his patient, saying, "Take this," and the man immediately swallowed it.