466 
Advances  in  Pharmaceutical  Manufactures. 
(Am.  Jour.  Pharm . 
I     October,  1902. 
then  the  standardization  of  alkaloidal  extracts  would  greatly  increase 
the  cost  of  one  litre,  but  not  of  200. 
(3)  It  is  very  evident  that  1,000,000  pills  or  tablets  can  be  more 
cheaply  made  than  100,  and  it  is  extremely  convenient  to  have  pills 
and  tablets  of  a  given  formula  all  of  one  size  with  the  materials 
evenly  distributed.  The  retailer  demands  and  receives  liquid  prepa- 
rations which  remain  clear  and  emulsions  that  do  not  separate ;  it 
may  be  doubted  if  this  would  always  be  the  case  if  he  made  them 
himself.  Therefore  the  large  manufacturing  plants  of  to-day  have 
developed.  Fifty  years  ago  the  manufacturers  supplied  small  quan- 
tities of  morphine,  chloroform,  ether,  galenical  extracts,  elixirs, 
opodeldoc,  mercurial  and  other  salts.  Ten  years  later  the  list  of 
fluid  extracts  had  greatly  increased ;  while  in  1870  extracts  with 
glycerin  were  in  favor.  Then  the  coated  pills  were  introduced  and 
the  business  increased  to  very  large  proportions  until  the  cheaper 
tablets  and  triturates  partially  replaced  them. 
In  1857  a  paper  was  read  before  the  American  Pharmaceutical 
Association  mentioning  gelatine  capsules,  sugar-coated  pills,  cod- 
liver  oil  emulsion,  and  the  effervescing  salts  which  Mr.  Maisch  had 
described  the  year  before :  it  is  remarkable  that  so  many  years 
passed  before  all  these  came  into  general  use.  The  soft  gelatine 
capsule  is  one  of  the  greatest  improvements  in  administering  drugs 
that  has  been  made. 
In  1885  the  synthetic  remedies  were  introduced  from  Germany. 
Antipyrine  was  soon  followed  by  acetanilid,  phenacetine,  sulfonal 
and  many  others.  Our  schools  of  science  awoke  to  the  value  of 
research  work  when  the  learned  and  patient  Germans  produced 
these  preparations. 
The  English  and  French  chemists  had  supplied  scarcely  any  syn- 
thetic remedies,  and  so  the  backwardness  of  the  Americans  would 
not  have  excited  much  comment,  were  it  not  that  certain  persons 
put  on  the  market  mixtures  containing  chiefly  acetanilid,  proclaim- 
ing them  as  new  chemical  compounds,  great  American  discoveries, 
and  which  were  the  cause  of  much  disparagement  and  ridicule  of 
American  methods  of  synthesis. 
Nearly  all  of  these  imitation  synthetics  have  disappeared,  and  it  is 
a  reproach  to  us  that  any  have  survived — for  there  can  be  no  deny- 
ing that  to  launch  a  product  by  a  misrepresentation  is  disreputable. 
In  every  succeeding  year  new  remedies,  genuine  synthetics,  have 
