Am  Jour.  Pharm. 
Dec,  1879. 
Remarks  on  Pills. 
587 
awkward  curve,  and  falls  prone  upon  its  side,  immovable,  and  out  of  the 
contest,  beaten.  The  muscular  process  of  deglutition,  wonderful  as  it 
is,  will  not  always  surmount  the  difficulty  presented  by  the  shape  of 
the  lenticular.  The  writer  has  heard  patients  complaint  of  the  flat  pill 
adhering  to  the  upper  base  of  the  tongue,  but  no  such  objection  has 
been  urged  against  the  globular  pill — it  will  vanish  from  sight  like  peas 
before  a  hungry  gobbler. 
The  compressed  pills  are  prescribed  by  comparatively  few  physicians, 
and  the  range  of  variety  ordered  is  not  great.  We  would  advise  each, 
dispenser,  whose  locality  demands  it,  to  provide  himself  with  one  of 
the  cheaper  hand-machines  which  are  offered,  and  dismissing  all  fears 
of  that  bug-bear  called  a  legal  injunction,  goto  work,  prepare  hislentic- 
ulars  as  they  are  required,  pressing  them  into  shape  gently,  and  handling 
them  afterward  daintily. 
As  a  consoling  compensation  for  the  trouble  and  expense  put  upon 
him,  he  will  find  the  cost  of  production  so  far  below  the  manufacturer's 
scale  of  prices  as  to  astonish  as  well  as  delight  him. 
We  may  here  state  (confidentially,  perhaps)  that  the  writer  was 
informed  by  the  agent  of  one  manufacturer  that  the  compressed  pills 
were  intended  only  for  the  wealthy  classes — this  fact  might  be  inferred 
from  an  inspection  of  the  list  of  prices. 
The  gelatin-coated,  mis-called  pill,  of  New  York  manufacture 
shows  too  distinctly  through  its  transparent  envelope  the  finger  marks 
of  manipulation — for  instance,  the  white  materials  show  a  dirty  white- 
ness, which  is,  to  say  the  least,  inelegant  in  nice  pharmacy  ;  whilst  the 
dark  materials  are,  in  both  shape  and  appearence,  so  unpleasantly  sugges- 
tive of  the  excrementive  deposits  of  a  certain  small  animal  (the  mouse) 
as  to  be  actually  repulsive  to  the  sight.  The  gelatin-coated,  like  all 
its  congeners,  puts  forth  some  especial  claim  to  merit,  but  it  certainly 
should  never  be  designated  as  a  pill — it  has  the  appearance  of  being 
made  in  great  haste — pinched  off,  we  might  sav,  with  a  lamentable 
want  of  uniformity  in  size.  Let  the  dispenser  presume  to  send  out 
from  his  pharmacy,  upon  extemporaneous  prescription,  such  shapeless 
objects  as  these  for  pills,  and  the  prescriber  would  assuredly  affect  indig- 
nation enough  to  annihilate  him.  We  would  offer  some  other  name  for 
these,  but  are  at  a  loss  to  suggest  anything  which  would  be  sufficiently 
distinctive. 
Our  motto,  "  hold  fast  to  that  which  is  good,"  is  applied  with  the 
