Even Maomao Could Not Make Ibuprofen—What a Single Tablet Reveals About Modern Civilization

Recently, I learned something interesting while watching a YouTube video about the popular Japanese anime The Apothecary Diaries.

The story is set in the rear palace of a fictional empire resembling ancient China, where a young apothecary named Maomao solves mysteries using her knowledge of medicines and poisons.

The video raised this question:

“What would happen if someone gave Maomao modern-day ibuprofen?”

Ibuprofen is a familiar modern painkiller. Apparently, the author is a pharmacist, which would explain the extraordinary level of detail about medicine.

Maomao knows a great deal about medicinal herbs and poisons. She even tests them on her own body.

So what would happen if she got her hands on ibuprofen?

Maomao Would Be Amazed by Ibuprofen

Suppose she could also read the package insert and understand the drug’s effects and side effects.

Maomao would probably test it on herself and be astonished by how well it worked.

Every tablet contains the same amount of the active ingredient.

Every tablet is the same size.

There is almost no variation in quality.

For an apothecary, it would be a dream medicine.

But then despair would set in.

“How am I supposed to make this?”

She has no equipment for analyzing its ingredients.

She has neither the facilities for chemical synthesis nor highly purified raw materials.

She has no machinery for mass-producing tablets of consistent quality.

It would not matter how brilliant Maomao was.

Ibuprofen is not a medicine that “a talented apothecary could make by working hard enough.”

It is a medicine that cannot be made without the entire apparatus of modern civilization.

Knowing the Recipe Is Not Enough

We tend to assume that if we have the knowledge, we can make something.

But with many modern products, merely knowing how they are made is not enough.

I once had a conversation with an AI about this.

What would happen if a worldwide zombie pandemic occurred and New Zealand was the only place to survive unscathed?

It is an island nation with the capacity to produce food. It seems like a highly favorable place for humanity to survive.

But could it rebuild modern civilization from there?

Computers, blueprints, and technical books still exist. People know how semiconductors are made.

In that case, they could simply build a semiconductor factory.

Except they could not.

Semiconductors require advanced manufacturing equipment.

That equipment requires precision components.

It also requires ultra-high-purity chemicals and specialized materials.

Then there are machine tools, power infrastructure, and logistics.

In other words, saying:

“We know how to make semiconductors”

is nowhere near enough.

You also need the industries that make the machines used to make semiconductors.

Go back one step, and you need the industries that came before those as well.

Keep tracing the chain backward, and eventually it connects to industries all over the world.

Modern civilization is that kind of monster.

A Single Ibuprofen Tablet Contains an Entire Civilization

A tablet from a pharmacy and a smartphone in your pocket are both small when you look only at the finished products.

But behind them are an astonishing number of people: raw-material suppliers, chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies, machinery manufacturers, logistics companies, electric utilities, researchers, engineers, and many others.

Yet not one of those people can make the whole thing alone.

A semiconductor engineer cannot make ibuprofen.

A pharmacist cannot make semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Everyone knows only the part they are responsible for.

And yet, taken together, they produce medicines and smartphones.

Perhaps that is what modern civilization is.

Have Modern People Become Smarter?

We live overwhelmingly more convenient lives than people in the past did.

If we have a headache, we take medicine. If we do not know something, we look it up on a smartphone.

That makes us vaguely feel as though we have become smarter than people in the past.

But if a modern person were sent back to Maomao’s world and told:

“Now make some ibuprofen,”

they would probably be unable to do anything.

They could not make a smartphone. They could not make an air conditioner. They might not even be able to make a single proper battery.

We are not advanced.

The system we are riding on is advanced.

Modern people have not become omnipotent.

Individually, we can do almost nothing. But by dividing labor among strangers around the world, we have become capable of doing almost anything.

Swallowing a single ibuprofen tablet is like buying that immense system for a few dozen yen—well under a dollar—and swallowing it whole.