‘Casi Como Doctor’: Pharmacists and Their Clients in a Mexican Urban Context

Abstract

While doing anthropological fieldwork in Mexican urban areas, I noticed that many people routinely consulted the local pharmacist ‘almost like a doctor’ (casi como doctor). They presented their physical complaints and described their symptoms, expecting the pharmacists to diagnose their illnesses and to prescribe treatment. The pharmacists obliged their clients by labeling their illnesses and by selling them the pharmaceutical preparations they recommended. I also observed that many people self-diagnosed their illnesses and medicated themselves with over-the-counter-drugs (hereafter referred to as OTC’s) which they purchased at local pharmacies, often in consultation with pharmacists. Both the practice of consulting pharmacists and that of self-diagnosis and self-medication are made easier in Mexico, as in many parts of the Third World, because few pharmaceutical preparations or patent medicines require a physician’s prescription to be purchased. In Mexico, in the early 1980s, only 289 items (such as Dexadrina, Nembutal, and Qualude) needed prescriptions to be sold. It is also common practice in Mexico to buy drugs labeled ‘prescription only’ without a prescription as I have observed people doing on numerous occasions. When people do have prescriptions, they still rely on self-diagnosis and often trade prescriptions with friends, neighbors, and family members who have had the same symptoms.