1 1 8 
Sugar-coated  Pills. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Phanru 
\      Mar.,  1877. 
to  indicate  that  this  was  not  the  case.  During  the  whole  course  of  my 
early  experience  in  pharmacy,  I  had  occasion  to  make  large  quantities 
of  a  pill  composed  of  opium,  camphor  and  capsicum.  This  pill  with 
many  physicians  was  extremely  popular.  It  was  considered  almost  a  spe- 
cific in  diarrhoea,  dysentery,  cholera  morbus,  and  during  the  prevalence 
of  epidemic  cholera  it  was  used  by  a  great  number  of  physicians  of  my 
acquaintance  with  the  greatest  success,  in  fact  it  was  their  sheet-anchor 
of  treatment.  These  pills  we  used  to  make  up  in  quantities  of  thou- 
sands at  a  time.  This  was  almost  before  sugar-coating  was  thought 
of,  or  at  least  before  it  was  introduced  to  any  extent. 
The  excipient  employed  in  making  these  pills  was  gum  arabic  and 
water,  the  most  insoluble  excipient  that  could  be  employed,  and  these 
pills  were  often  kept  on  hand  for  months  before  they  were  used,  yet 
no  complaint  was  ever  heard  of  their  tardiness  of  action  or  inefficiency. 
One  physician  of  my  acquaintance,  the  late  Dr.  Wm.  S.  Latta,  of 
near  Parksburg,  Pa.,  employed  these  pills  very  extensively  in  his  prac- 
tice. I  used  to  prepare  them  for  him  in  lots  of  from  five  hundred  to  & 
thousand  at  a  time,  which,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  would  last 
him  for  a  ytar  or  longer.  Yet  he  never  found  these  pills  to  lose  their 
virtues  by  the  petrifying  hand  of  time,  although  they  were  used  in 
diseases  in  which  the  alimentary  canal  is  in  the  most  sensitive  and  irri- 
table state,  and  in  the  most  unfavorable  condition  for  solution,  absorp- 
tion and  assimilation.  This  is  not  only  my  experience  in  the  pill  trade, 
but  I  have  no  doubt  it  has  been  the  experience  of  thousands  of  other 
pharmacists  who  have  had  a  long  and  large  experience,  and  who  have 
been  observing. 
This  is  the  best  kind  of  evidence  of  the  power  of  the  stomach  and. 
intestinal  canal  to  dissolve  pills  that  have  been  long  kept  and  that  are 
uncoated,  while  it  speaks  in  thunder-tones  in  favor  of  pills  that  are 
coated ;  because  if  pills  are  found  to  be  soluble  and  active  that  have 
been  kept  for  years  uncoated,  how  much  more  soluble  would  they  be 
when  carefully  made  and  properly  sugar-coated.  Besides,  whoever 
heard  of  frequent  complaints,  by  physicians  or  any  one  else,  of  the 
insolubility  or  inefficiency  of  pills,  either  coated  or  uncoated,  until  this 
terrible  "  bug-a-boo "  of  insolubility  of  sugar-coated  pills  put  in  an 
appearance,  notwithstanding  millions  of  boxes  of  the  various  proprie- 
tary pills  have  been  sold  for  years  and  years,  and  thousands  of  pounds 
of  officinal  and  semi-officinal  pills,  saying  nothing  about  the  mongrel. 
