The etymology of drastic leads us to drastikós, a word from the Greek language. It is an adjective that can be used to qualify someone or something that is crude, inflexible, radical or severe.
For example: “I am going to be a bit drastic but you have to understand me: either you adopt a healthier lifestyle or you die”, “We need to make a drastic change if we do not want the company to go bankrupt”, “The star made a drastic makeover of her image and dyed her hair pink.
Many times the idea of drastic is used to name a kind of modification that is very noticeable or obvious. If a man who wore his hair long decides to shave it off, it can be said that he underwent a drastic change in appearance. For his part, a young priest who abandoned the robes and became an underwear model drastically changed his life.
According to digopaul, the drastic can also be seen in abrupt changes in statistics or trends. Suppose a country used to have an unemployment rate between 3% and 5%. However, after an economic crisis, this index shoots up to 28% in just a few months. The growth of unemployment, in this framework, was drastic.
In a similar sense, if a government that allocated 10,000,000 pesos a month to subsidize scientific activity announces that it will reduce said aid to just 5,000,000, it can be said, therefore, that the authorities will make a drastic cut in these subsidies, since they will only grant half of the money they contributed before.
Drastic decisions are not usually well seen by society, although sometimes they represent the only way to overcome a harmful situation. The organized world seeks stability, and for this it relies on systems that try to repress our impulses, leading us down a path of consumerism and imposed ideals that little by little appease our most instinctive desires.
In most of today’s societies, the ideal citizen follows the path that his elders trace for him before his birth: in general, it is a life of study and work that can support the development of his own family, of your spouse and your children, with integrity and responsibility. In the biography of the right person there is no room for surprises, since “the indications of his parents should be enough for him to know what to do at all times.” However, the great geniuses who have revolutionized the course of humanity, and those to come, have taken and will take drastic decisions.
A purgative is a substance that is used with the aim of evacuating the belly, that is, purging it (cleaning it, removing waste or harmful elements). Drastic purgative is called, in this context, the one that if administered in very high doses can become an irritating poison.
The drastic purgative is of the energetic type, and must be used with great caution. It is usually used in any case that requires a great revulsion (a curative means that doctors use for certain internal diseases; it is the production of inflammation or congestion on the surface of the mucous membranes or the skin using some chemical, physical agent or even organic). For example, it is used when there is a case of dropsy or cerebral congestion, among others.
It is important to note that drastic purgatives should not be administered to patients with inflammation of the digestive organs. Some of the most common are: oil of spurge; gutta gum; acíbar; scamper; coloquintida; tiglio croton oil; jalapa; Indian pine nuts; Leroy’s purgative.
