[General] Do we take/eat medicine?

[Aamir Tariq]

When a patient goes to see a medical practitioner and he examines him/her and prescribes him/her medicine. Can we say.

Alicia is sick, she went to the doctor but she is not taking the medicine he prescribed for her.

Alicia is sick, she went to the doctor but she is not eating the medicine he prescribed for her.

Also tell me do we need to use the preposition "for" in
the medicine he prescribed for her.

or should it be to
the medicine he prescribed to her.

or no preposition is needed her
the medicine he prescribed her

Regards
Aamir the Global Citizen

 

[Barb_D]

While Google is not perfect, you could do a quick search for the phrase "take medicine" and "eat medicine" and see what conclusions you can draw yourself.

I would use "for."

You have a comma splice. Alicia is sick. She went to... OR Alicia is sick; she went to...

 

[Aamir Tariq]

You have a comma splice. Alicia is sick. She went to... OR Alicia is sick; she went to...

I am always confused about where to put comma and where to put semi colon. I am extremely sorry about my punctuation.

 

[Barb_D]

When you have what can be a sentence (Alicia is sick) you have an independent clause.
Do not joint two independent clauses with just a comma. You can use a conjunction (and, but, because, etc.) or a semi-colon.

What did you find about eating/taking medication?

 

[Aamir Tariq]

When you have what can be a sentence (Alicia is sick) you have an independent clause.
Do not joint two independent clauses with just a comma. You can use a conjunction (and, but, because, etc.) or a semi-colon.

What did you find about eating/taking medication?

We do use take medicine, take pill very commonly here in Pakistan. And it is also used in our newspapers and their online versions on the web both in India and Pakistan. So google does show them.

But I am not sure about the Americans and British people if they use "take" with medicine or not. Because I was surprised to find out that Americans and British people don't use "take" with tea as well as with meals. But we do use them here "take tea" means to drink tea "take dinner" means eat dinner. We had a long discussion about that on one of my previous threads. Now, similarly I was wondering if that is also the case with medication. And I haven't found out my answer yet.

 

[emsr2d2]

We take medicine/pills/tablets/drugs/capsules/supplements.

 

[Rover_KE]

Click here for another resource you could have consulted.

Frankly, I'm amazed that there are any examples of 'eat medicine' recorded.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Frankly, I'm amazed that there are any examples of 'eat medicine' recorded.

We don't use eat medicine either, But we do use take tea, take lunch/dinner/breakfast. I was just wondering if you guys also use "take" for medicine.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

We take medicine/pills/tablets/drugs/capsules/supplements.

Bingo, that's exactly what I was looking for. That's my answer.

 

[Barb_D]

And I haven't found out my answer yet.

While Google is not perfect, you could do a quick search for the phrase "take medicine" and "eat medicine" and see what conclusions you can draw yourself.

Did you do this?

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Did you do this?

Yeah I just brought it up on this forum because I know this is better than google with fine and dedicated people like you.

 

[GoesStation]

Google is perfect for this particular question. Look at the results of Google searches for "eat medicine" and "take medicine" (including the quotation marks). Which one brings up pages about medicine? Which one returns pages asking whether to use "eat" or "take"?

The Google result tells you the context in which each phrase appears somewhere on the Web. Millions of pages contain the word "medicine", so you can make a good judgment about how the word is used.

If you were interested in how a rare word is used, you might not get such reliable results.

 

[Skrej]

If somebody is eating their medicine, I'd suggest double-checking their dosage. :shock:

If anybody talks of eating medicine, then they're probably using it as a sarcastic comment about overdosing, or otherwise abusing the prescription.

For example, I might say something like 'snacking on Oxy(contin)' or 'dining on Quaaludes', to refer to somebody systematically abusing drugs.