Sugar-coated  Pills. 
(  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\      Mar.,  1877. 
emetics  and  nauseants,  as  well  as  purgatives,  produce  excessive  action 
when  given  in  minute  doses  and  repeated  every  hour  or  so,  whereas 
five  times  the  dose  might  be  given  at  once  without,  perhaps,  produc- 
ing any  sensible  effect.1 
It  would  seem  that  many  pharmacists  labor  under  the  erroneous 
impression  that  digestion  is  conducted  alone  in  the  stomach,  but  this  is 
a  great  mistake.2 
Gastric  digestion  is  only  the  first  stage  or  commencement  of  the 
process.  After  a  pill  has  been  subjected  to  the  solvent  action  and 
digestive  power  of  the  fluids  of  the  stomach  and  the  rough  handling  it 
receives  from  the  muscular  .movements  of  that  organ,3  if  it  is  not 
dissolved,  it  then  passes  to  the  duodenum,  where  it  meets  with  the 
secretions  of  the  pancreas  and  liver  and  those  of  the  villous  coat  of 
the  intestinal  canal,  which,  together  with  the  gastric  and  salivary 
fluids  which  have  passed  the  pylorus  from  the  stomach  intermingled 
with  the  chyme,  forms  a  combination  of  greater  digestive  and  solvent 
power  than  that  of  the  stomach  itself.4 
1  Dr.  Dunglison,  in  his  "  Therapeutics  and  Materia  Medica,"  vol.  1,  page  168, 
"well  elucidates  this  fact  by  a  case  which  he  says  the  late  Dr.  James  Gregory,  of 
Edinburgh,  was  in  the  habit  of  relating  in  his  lectures:  "A  boy  was  directed  to 
^take  an  ounce  of  Epsom  salt,  but  having  a  strong  objection  to  the  taste  of  the 
•cathartic,  resolved  to  form  it  into  pills  with  crumb  of  bread.  On  making  the  pills 
•of  an  appropriate  size,  he  found  they  amounted  to  three  hundred  and  sixty,  a  num- 
ber so  near  to  that  of  the  days  of  the  year  that  he  determined  to  make  it  correspond 
entirely.  Accordingly  he  divided  them  into  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  portions, 
and  took  them  all,  one  after  the  other.  The  effect  was  extraordinary.  The  most 
violent  hypercatharsis  was  induced,  so  as  to  endanger  his  life.  This  was  owing, 
probably,  to  the  gradual  and  successive  breaking  down  of  the  pills  in  the  canal,  so 
that  particle  after  particle  came  in  contact  with  the  mucous  membrane." 
2  Dr.  Reese,  in  his  "  Analysis  of  Physiology,"  page  172,  says:  "A  more  com- 
plete digestion,  in  fact,  takes  place  in  the  upper  portion  of  the  intestines  than  in  the 
stomach  itself." 
3  Dr.  Reese,  loc.  cit ,  page  167,  says:  "When  the  food  has  reached  the  stomach 
It  is  subjected  to  a  peculiar  peristaltic  movement.  This  is  produced  by  the  contrac- 
tion and  relaxation  of  the  various  fasciculi  of  the  muscular  coat;  it  causes  a  com- 
plete revolution  of  the  contents,  in  every  direction,  and  a  consequent  thorough 
trituration." 
4  "  The  fluid  of  the  small  intestines,  which  is  compounded  by  the  intermixture  of 
the  biliary  and  pancreatic  secretions  with  the  salivary  and  gastric  fluids,  and  with  the 
secretions  of  the  intestinal  glandulae,  appears  to  possess  the  very  peculiar  power  of 
dissolving  or  of  reducing  to  an  absorbable  condition  alimentary  substances  of  every 
class,  thus  possessing  more  of  the  character  of  a  '  universal  solvent '  than  either  of 
