When the patient got the eardrops prescription filled the pharmacist wrote on the bottle... Three drops in r--for right--ear. No space and no punctuation. For "right ear," the instructions on the bottle read: r--ear.
That spells rear.
The patient said later he knew it sounded like a strange remedy for an earache but he had dutifully applied the three drops to his rear for three days before the error was discovered.
- reported by Paul Harvey on his radio broadcast on January 15, 1982; story was confirmed by the American Medical News
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