English

Noun

pharmacophobia ‎(plural not attested)

1. The irrational fear or avoidance of a medicine, or of medicines in general.
   • 1858 May 8, John Addington Symonds, “On Headache”, Lecture III of the Gulstonian Lectures for 1858 at the Royal College of Physicians, printed in The Medical Times and Gazette, John Churchill and Sons, page 472:

     Suggest a dinner-pill or a seidlitz powder, and his face is convulsed with a fanatical pharmacophobia! His soul abhors the doing of such profane violence to the processes of nature!

   • 1973 November 24, W. St C. Symmers, “Amphotericin Pharmacophobia”, in British Medical Journal, pages 4: 460–463:

     Summary: Five cases are described in which fear of the possibly hazardous effects of giving amphotericin to patients with kidney disease resulted in death from a progressive infection by an amphotericin-sensitive fungus ( […] ).

   • 2005, I. Sibitz et al, “Pharmacophilia and Pharmacophobia: Determinants of Patients’ Attitudes towards Antipsychotic Medication”, in Pharmacopsychiatry, Thieme Medical Publishers, pages 38: 107–112.