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JAMA. 1968;204(2):165.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Incompatibility was apt to cause much anxiety to the physician in the days of polypharmacy. When prescriptions were page-long, a short memory could fail to forewarn that some drug combinations might end up in precipitation, deliquescence, or even embarrassing explosion. With the age of "shotgun" prescriptions safely behind, this worry has now been relegated to the pharmaceutical industry. A clear, palatable, proprietary mixture or a smooth, prefabricated tablet takes care of all these incompatibilities.

There is much more, however, to unwelcome drug interaction than physical, chemical, or pharmaceutical incompatibilities between the ingredients of a prescription. Of greater importance is the physiologic discord which occurs when drugs taken concomitantly interfere indirectly with one another's actions. Potentiation or inhibition may then unexpectedly vitiate the desired results. When a monamine oxidase inhibitor is taken concurrently with a sympathomimetic drug, the released pressor amines potentiate the latter's action. Unpleasant and often dangerous "pheochromocytoma-like" symptoms . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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