AmMarUr,I8P76arm"}      Ready-Made  Pills  of  Our  Bay.  \  2 1 
In  proximate  analysis  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  not  to  place 
any  reliance  upon  any  single  reaction,  much  less  when  the  test 
is  applied  in  such  complex  mixtures  as  infusions  and  tinctures  must 
necessarily  be.  While  it  is  true  that  tannins  produce,  with  iron 
salts,  blueish  -  black  or  greenish  -  black  colorations  or  precipitates, 
according  to  the  state  of  concentration,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  there  are  numerous  other  compounds  which  produce  somewhat 
similar  reactions,  without  being  in  the  least  related  to  the  interesting 
group  of  tannins. 
THE  READY-MADE  PILLS  OF  OUR  DAY. 
BY  SAMUEL  CAMPBELL,  OF  PHILADE1  PHIA. 
A  paper  bearing  the  above  title  appears  in  the  late  Proceedings  of 
the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  purporting  to  emanate  from 
the  pen  of  Joseph  P.  Remington,  Professor  of  Pharmacy  in  the 
Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy.  Any  one  reading  it  carefully  will 
find  that  the  written  statements  and  tabulated  experiments  do  not  agree 
as  to  the  awards  of  merit  in  his  classification  of  the  various  ready-made 
pills  of  our  day.  He  writes  that  his  tabulated  results  show  the  un- 
coated  pill  to  be  the  most  soluble,  next  in  order  the  sugar  coated  pill, 
then  the  compressed  or  lenticular  pill,  then  the  gelatin  coated  pill. 
Mr.  Remington  starts  out  by  making  up  a  special  uncoated  pill,  using  as 
an  excipient  glycerin  in  both  cases,  which  is  not  a  fair  or  just  criterion 
of  the  uncoated  ready-made  pill  of  our  day.  It  should  have  been  the 
regular  officinal  ready-made  pill  of  the  shop,  usually  made  in  strict  ac- 
cordance with  the  ingredients  and  excipients  directed  in  the  United 
States  Pharmacopoeia,  and  kept  on  hand  for  immediate  dispensing.  Mr. 
Remington  then  prefers  the  sugar  coated  pill  as  second  in  point  of 
solubility. 
If  he  will  look  over  his  experiments  and  reflect  a  moment,  he  will 
observe  that  he  should  have  given  the  preference  to  the  compressed 
pills,  as  it  appears  in  his  tables  they  were  the  only  ones  dissolved,  all 
the  others  were  only  disintegrated,  or  as  in  the  case  of  the  cachets  de 
pain  the  materials  were  only  shaken  out,  (disintegration  does  not 
prove  solubility),1  and  in  the  acidified  solution  of  Pepsin  the  compressed 
1  We  are  informed  by  Professor  Remington  that  the  compressed  quinia  pill  dis- 
solves gradually  without  becoming  disintegrated  5  it,  therefore,  presents  to  the  liquid 
of  the  stomach  and  intestinal  canal  a  limited  surface  to  act  upon,  while  the  uncoated 
