The drug cartels are getting desperate to come up with new names for their latest offerings. Recently I was amused to learn that my patients can take 54 mg. of Concerta® to keep them alert during the day and 10 mg. of Sonata® to put them to sleep at night.
But I find these musical terms confusing. I’m afraid that one day when I’m less than bright-eyed, I’ll prescribe Sonata for alertness and Concerta for sleep.

In a week I’ll hear from a perky lawyer, who is appropriately taking Concerta for alertness, informing me that one of my patients (his client) has stayed up all night for a week. Then, smirketh the lawyer, my patient was fired for pitching forward in a dead faint onto his keyboard every afternoon in his cubicle.

"Doctor," the lawyer will say in a tone that emphasizes the quotation marks around my title, "your written prescription for Sonata says 'Take one on arising' and for Concerta, 'Take one at bedtime.'"

Whoops. (In medicine, "whoops" is known as a million-dollar word.)

If 10 milligrams of Sonata works for sleep, can 20 milligrams of Nocturne® be far behind?

Before the drug cartels exhaust the musical repertoire, I have it on good authority that they will soon be using Yiddish names for their newest medications. This came about, of course, with the astounding appointment by Al Gore of Joe Lieberman, a Jew, as his running mate. Suddenly, being Jewish is fashionable. (Well maybe it’s always been fashionable for an internist, like me, to be Jewish. But a Vice-President?)

The makers of Librium® -- an ancient, venerable tranquilizer from the early 60s, long since eclipsed by Valium® -- have decided to rename Librium, Lieberman®. ("Feel tense, exhausted, bushed? Take a Lieberman®.") A minority drug, they reason, needs a minority name with potential mass appeal.

Average dose is 10 milligrams of Lieberman® every four hours as needed for anxiety. One of the common side effects is an involuntary shrug if the anxiety persists.

Already in the pipeline is a new drug for social phobia called Chutzpa® (pronounced with the guttural kh sound that Scots use in "loch."). A member of the SSRI family, Chutzpa® will appeal to the wallflowers, the milquetoasts, and the 'shynicks' of our society.

Proposed direct-to-consumer TV slogan: "With 30 Milligrams of Chutzpa®, You Can Lick the World!"

According to Leo Rosten, whose classic book The Joys of Yiddish furnished me with critical source material, the ultimate definition of chutzpa is a man who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. This definition is slated to appear in the "adverse reactions" section of the drug insert that will accompany each bottle of Chutzpa®.

To bulk up aging muscles, a variety of DHEA, called Bulvon®, is in clinical trials in Delaware. According to Rosten, the word, bulvon (rhymes with "pull on"), is Yiddish for "a gross, thick-headed, thick-skinned oaf possessed of brute strength." Amazingly, test marketing revealed that these very traits are avidly desired by an estimated 12 million lean scholarly men over age 60 who are ashamed to be seen naked in gymnasium locker rooms.

Testimonial: "After I took Bulvon® for six months, women couldn’t keep their hands off my biceps!"

Many an asthmatic has experienced the life-saving effects of inhaled albuterol, which dilates spastic bronchial tubes. Inhaled corticosteroids are a second lifesaver. Now Aerolabs has come up with a metered dose inhaler combining both ingredients that will be marketed as Neshoma® -- after the Yiddish word for "the soul, or the breath of life."

As doctors know, life begins with an inhalation and ends with an exhalation. The makers of Neshoma® (who point out the nice breathy quality to its pronunciation) are hoping that, between these two life-bracketing respirations, they can help sufferers of asthma and emphysema breathe more easily. Unfortunately, the proposed price of $82.00 per unit is enough to take anyone’s breath away.

Every Jew knows that the finest thing you can say about a man is that he’s a mench. For the many men who can never be a mench, they can at least take a Mench®, XYY Lab’s new pill for erectile dysfunction.

Here’s what Leo Rosten has to say about being a mench:

"To be a mench has nothing to do with success, wealth, status. A judge can be a zhlob (an oaf); a millionaire can be a momzer (a detestable person); a professor can be a schlemiel (a social misfit); a doctor a klutz (a clod); a lawyer a bulvon (a tall, fat slob). The key to being 'a real mench' is nothing less than character: rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. Many a poor man, many an ignorant man is a mench."

"But," say the makers of Mench® in their print ads, "if a mench loses his erection, even he may turn into a zhlob."
Cheers - Oscar London