September 14,1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
21 & 
French chalk, or powdered starch and French chalk 
mixed. I also fancy something may he done with glue 
made liquid, after the French fashion, with nitric acid, 
and some combination of powders. 
Of course, the powders used could, with cochineal, 
saffron, etc., be variously coloured if wished, according 
to the taste of patient or dispenser. 
The Whiter added that since preparing the paper he 
had spoken to a medical friend who objected to traga- 
canth, on the ground that it would be insoluble in the 
stomach. His own opinion was that, even if that body 
were insoluble, the coating of the pill would crack in the 
stomach and allow the pill to act. 
The President remarked that coated pills were much 
more in vogue on the other side of the Atlantic than 
here. He would ask the two American gentlemen what 
they had to say on the subject of the paper. 
Professor Wayne: Sugar-coated pills in the last 
few years have become quite an institution of America. 
In fact, no drug shop is without them. We not only 
coat them when made from prescriptions, but a whole 
list is kept constantly at hand ready coated, and we buy 
them from the wholesale manufacturers. We have 
found very little objection to these pills, because of the 
improved process by which we manufacture them, and 
the low temperature that is used in the sugar-coating. 
They are perfectly soluble, and answer all the purposes 
of pills. In extemporaneous sugar-coating our method 
is to make the pill as dry and hard as possible, coat it 
with a solution of tolu, and then cover it with a powder 
containing equal parts of milk-sugar and ordinary sugar, 
and dry it. It is perfectly protected by the tolu, and 
has a complete coating of sugar. It has not the pearly 
appearance which a machine-made pill has, but it 
answers every purpose; the coating serving to disguise 
the pill and make it pleasant to take. We have a small 
apparatus for extemporaneous coating of pills. It has a 
revolving cylinder and a spirit lamp. The pills are ro¬ 
tated in the machine, and in a very short time a perfect 
coating is produced. But by far the larger portion of 
the sugar-coated pills are manufactured by the manufac¬ 
turing pharmacists, and sold at the dispensaries, and pre¬ 
scribed by our physicians. 
Mr. Andrews : As a pill-taker, unfortunatelyas well 
as a pill-maker, I should very much prefer a thin coat¬ 
ing either of silver or of gold to Creta prcecipitata , or 
French chalk, or plaster of Paris. With respect to the 
American plan, that appears to me perfectly simple and 
easy to carry out, and entirely unobjectionable, but the 
practice of buying pills from wholesale houses, I think, 
would never suit the English pharmaceutist. 
The President : When I was in Philadelphia a year 
ago I was allowed, by the courtesy of Mr. Wiegand, to 
see the whole manufacture of sugar-coated pills by the 
large firm of Burke and Trinshow. I think it was quite 
by an extension of courtesy that I was allowed to see it. 
But although I had the very strongest objection to buy¬ 
ing pills from wholesale manufacturers on a large scale, 
I certainly cannot bear too high a testimony to the ex¬ 
cessive care in that establishment, and I would as soon 
take a pill out of their place as one I made myself. The 
enormous scale on which this thing is done in America 
surprised me more than anything else in connection with 
American pharmacy. 
Professor Markoe : I only want to say a word with re¬ 
gard to the positive objection in America to the introduc¬ 
tion of anything of a mineral or inorganic character in the 
pill coatings. If any manufacturing pharmacist were 
once detected in that practice, and it were exposed, it 
would be pretty sure to kill the sale of his preparations. 
I may mention that I have seen a sugar-coated sulphate 
of quinine pill broken after two years, and the interior 
of the pill-mass has been quite soft. The coating used 
in that case was inspissated honey. 
Mr. Atkins : There could be no more appropriate 
place for the discussion of pill-coating than Brighton, 
where it is successfully carried out. There is no great 
difficulty, I imagine, in coating pills in large quantities. 
If you have to make a large quantity at a time, processes 
are pretty well known and practised for the purpose. 
What we want to ascertain is a good method of extem¬ 
porizing a coating or rapidly coating pills. I believe 
that pharmacists will say that the tendency is growing 
for coating -, and if any one present is able to contribute 
to us any method by which we can rapidly and success¬ 
fully coat a box of pills, he will confer a very great boon. 
That I think is a yet undiscovered boon. 
Mr. Bottle (Dover) asked why their Transatlantic 
friends used milk as well as cane sugar. 
Professor AVayne said that he had found by experience 
that the mixture of two gave a much more uniform 
coating than simply cane sugar. 
The Tinctures and AVines of the British 
Pharmacopoeia. 
RY W. W. STODDART AND R. L. TUCKER. 
The solutions which we call by the doubtful appella¬ 
tion of “tinctures” form no insignificant item in the 
stock of a pharmaceutist. They have repeatedly been 
the subject of comment, and an apology is piobably 
necessary for bringing them forward in the present 
paper Why are they introduced into our Materia 
Medica ? Is it because they are used by the physician 
as mere flavouring or preservative ingredients in their 
prescriptions ? Or is it because they are really valuable 
and true solutions of the active principles of plants, and 
having specific powers as medicinal agents i \\ e think 
the latter to be the case, and have tried to find out the 
most exhaustive method of preparation, and for the 
elimination of a product similar in all respects to that ot 
the recognized Pharmacopoeia. , 
The following notes are the results of an extensive 
series of analyses and experiments made for the attain¬ 
ment of this object. 
Some prefer the old process of maceration, others the 
more recent one of percolation, while the compilers of the 
present Pharmacopoeia generally recommend a quasi 
combination of both. . . 
At our first meeting at Bath, a very interesting paper 
was read by Mr. Savage on some of the tinctures of 
the last edition of the Pharmacopoeia, and a table of results 
appended. His plan of examination seemed good in 
many respects, and we have taken it as our guide m 
compiling a complete epitome of the tinctures and wines, 
each of which has, with few exceptions, been prepared m 
three ways for the purpose of comparison, viz. :— 
1. By the maceration (marked in the table M). 
2. By the Pharmacopoeia formula (marked ±). 
3. By the same, as modified by the authors (marked S). 
They have all been made with the greatest .and most 
scrupulous care, and the sp. gray, of the spirit or wino 
ascertained and adjusted before being used. . 
There are 65 tinctures and 10 wines ordered in the 
Pharmacopoeia ; of these, 10 are simple solutions -4 are 
prepared by maceration,, and 40 by a combination ot 
maceration, y and so-called percolation. Oar tableg 
the results of an examination of all, except 
tiave no relation to the methods m question, and is 
irranged in columns in the following manner 
1. The method of preparation employed. 
2. The weight per ounce of ingredients ordered. 
3. The sp. grav. of solvent. 
4 . Ths sp. grav. of the resulting tmeturo. 
5. The total contents, per ounce, of the tincture. 
6 The percentage of ingredients dissolved. 
Preparation by maceration .—This is the oldest pro¬ 
cess and consists in bruising or coarsely powdering 
Certain roots, barks, seeds etc., and placmg them m 
spirit or other menstruum for a BP^ifaed time. Affc 
the time for maceration has elapsed, the fluid is strained 
