468 
Pharmaceutical  P?'eparations. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
I     October,  1905. 
ing  upon  the  field  of  the  retailer  and  depriving  him  of  part  of  his 
revenue,  or  such  as  was  derived  from  manufacturing  his  own  prepa- 
rations, maintaining,  of  course,  that  every  pharmacist  should  manu- 
facture his  pharmaceuticals  as  much  as  possible.  While  such  a  view 
of  the  matter  would  seem  to  be  the  correct  one,  and  in  harmony 
with  the  views  held  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  the  conditions  have 
changed,  especially  during  the  past  thirty  years.  The  addition  of  a 
vast  number  of  products  to  the  materia  medica  from  vegetable, 
mineral,  and  animal  sources,  and  the  lack  of  machinery  and  necessary 
appliances,  makes  the  manufacture  of  pharmaceutical  preparations 
a  problem  far  beyond  the  scope  or  capacity  of  a  druggist's  laboratory. 
Greater  advances  have  been  made  in  the  last  thirty  years  in  the  per- 
fecting of  labor-saving  machinery  in  use  in  the  large  laboratories 
than  have  been  made  in  all  the  preceding  centuries. 
As  to  important  new  features  in  machinery  in  the  modern  labora- 
tory, I  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  improved  tablet  machines, 
capable  of  compressing  200,000  tablets  in  ten  hours;  pill-cutting 
machines  and  vacuum  gelatin-coating  machines,  which  by  means  of 
vacuum  tubes  and  two  operators,  are  capable  of  coating  75,000 
to  100,000  pills  in  a  day,  supplanting  the  old  process  of  gelatin 
coating  by  means  of  the  needle  rack,  which  process  left  a  nee  lie- 
hole  in  the  finished  pill.  The  use  of  vacuum  stills  for  concentrating 
extracts  is  an  important  feature  in  the  modern  laboratory  and  has 
been  in  use  for  some  years ;  another  important  feature  is  the  cen- 
trifugal extractor  and  the  centrifugal  filter,  now  being  adopted  in 
place  of  the  unsightly  filter  presses  and  the  filter  stands  of  the  past. 
Among  other  ingenious  machines  are  the  power  suppository  ma- 
chine, collapsible-tube  closing  machine,  mass  mixers,  granulators, 
pulverizers  and  other  labor-saving  devices  which  constitute  the 
equipment  of  the  modern  manufacturing  plant.  Thus  it  is  that  by 
the  use  of  labor-saving  machinery  of  the  present  and  the  use  of 
improved  processes  and  skilled  operators,  the  pharmaceutical  labora- 
tories to-day  are  enabled  to  manufacture  products  quicker,  cheaper 
and  better  than  was  possible  forty  years  ago,  when  such  machinery 
was  not  in  use.  Instead  of  the  manufacturers  encroaching  upon  the 
field  of  the  retail  pharmacist,  he  is  an  aid  to  the  retailer  in  the  field 
of  pharmacy,  and  their  interests  are  mutual,  so  to  speak,  as  producer 
and  dispenser. 
Laboratories  are  now  established  in  nearly  all  the  principal  cities. 
