AmMa°rU^7h7arn1' }  Sugar-coated  Pills.  1 1 1 
class  of  medicines  which  often  fail  in  exerting  their  normal  therapeutic 
effects,  which,  if  administered  in  the  pill  form,  may  be  unwittingly  and 
unjustly  ascribed  either  to  their  age  or  to  their  coating.  These,  with 
many  other  circumstances  well  known  to  medical  men,  may  interfere 
with  digestion,  absorption  and  assimilation,  and  conspire  to  render  the 
action  of  medicines  uncertain.  Hence,  to  test  the  relative  merit  or 
activity  of  the  various  kinds  of  pills,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  in  order 
for  the  therapeutist  to  arrive  at  a  just  and  rational  conclusion,  that  he 
should  take  into  careful  consideration  all  the  various  disturbing  causes 
which  beset  the  action  of  remedies. 
In  consequence  of  the  doubt  and  uncertainty  created  in  the  minds  of 
physicians  and  pharmacists  regarding  the  solubility  of  coated  pills,  sev- 
eral pharmacists  instituted  a  series  of  experiments  by  means  of  artificial 
digestion,  to  test  the  relative  solubility  of  the  various  coated  and  other 
ready-made  pills  of  the  day.  With  the  results  of  their  experiments  the  read- 
ers of  this  journal,  I  presume,  are  aware.  But  the  utmost  all  such  experi- 
ments can  demonstrate  is  the  relative  solubility  of  the  pills  under  treat- 
ment in  the  artificial  mixture  in  which  they  are  digested  or  macerated. 
They  cannot  convey  any  definite  or  even  proximate  idea  of  the  rela- 
tive solubility  of  the  pills  when  they  are  submitted  to  the  natural  pro- 
cess of  digestion  as  it  is  conducted  in  the  human  stomach  and  intes- 
tinal canal.  The  conditions  under  which  the  artificial  digestion  is 
conducted  are  all  so  entirely  different  from  those  attending  the  natural 
process  as  to  render  comparison  of  results  entirely  out  of  the  question. 
There  is  absence  of  the  genial  warmth  and  the  muscular  movements  of 
the  stomach  and  intestinal  canal,  and  of  the  disintegrating  influence  of  the 
constant  agitation,  trituration  and  the  attrition  to  which  the  pill  is  sub- 
jected in  contact  with  the  particles  of  food,  etc.,  usually  present  in  the 
alimentary  canal,  and  the  powerfully  solvent  action  of  the  various 
secretions  not  only  of  the  stomach,  but  those  of  the  entire  mucous  sur- 
face of  the  intestinal  canal,  all  of  which  are  so  destructive  to  the 
integrity  of  the  pill  mass.  These,  we  might  say,  are  all  wanting 
in  the  artificial  process,  and  will  ever  render  the  latter,  no  matter  how 
carefully  conducted,  nugatory  and  barren  of  even  an  approximation  to 
positive  or  satisfactory  results.1 
1  Dr.  Dalton,  in  his  "Treatise  on  Human  Physiology,"  page  133,  says,  concern- 
ing the  muscular  movements  of'  the  stomach,  that  this  "  continuous  movement  of 
the  stomach  is  one  which  cannot  be  successfully  imitated  in  experiments  on  artificial 
