i'm a nurse with many years experience in emergency admissions, elderly care and currently cardiac intensive care. that GP should be shot, many medications (especially antihypertensives and diuretics) can cause a patient to shed sodium, but there are easy and cheap drug therapies or a change in initial drug regieme, that will correct this small problem. true if a patients sodium becomes very low (or high) it can be come a problem, but in an extremely elderly lady there is little that can be done about that. the GP's "prescription" is barbaric and i would be supprised to see a PRHO write that one up. You are right it is abuse, it is abuse of the doctor patient relationship, because now this elderly lady dosent want to drink or eat anything in case it tastes as horrible as her medication. Tom, please report this, you are probably dealing with a very old fashioned or very unwesternised doctor, who needs retraining or taking up to the top field and put out of his misery.