122 
Ready-Made  Pills  of  Our  Day. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Mar.  1876. 
pills  were  dissolved  in  the  same  time  as  the  sugar  coated  pills.  Again, 
the  compressed  compound  cathartic  pills  assert  their  superiority  in 
becoming  disintegrated  15  minutes  before  the  sugar  coated  pill.  In  the 
case  of  the  uncoated  compound  cathartic  pill,  Mr.  Remington  uses 
the  indefinite  »and  impractical  expression  of  "gone  in  15  minutes." 
This  implies  a  perfect  solution  of  the  pill,  and  when  we  take  the  in- 
gredients into  consideration,  we  know  that  they  cannot  be  wholly  dis- 
solved in  a  weak  alkaline  solution.  Another  important  fact,  which  Mr. 
Remington  has  overlooked,  is  that  a  sugar  coated  pill  must  first  be  de- 
prived of  its  coating  before  the  solvent  reaches  the  pill  itself,  which  he 
asserts  is  from  5  to  15  minutes.  Two  other  points  in  this  paper  open 
to  criticism  are  the  shaking  every  3  minutes,  which  in  the  case  of  the 
gelatin  pills,  occupied  18  and  24  hours.  Query  :  How  did  Mr.  Rem- 
ington manage  to  shake  the  pills  every  3  minutes  during  the  night  ? 
Also,  Mr.  Remington  neglects  to  state  how  he  maintained  a  regular 
temperature  of  8o°  and  980  for  that  length  of  time.  And  in  order  to 
further  confirm  the  idea  that  Mr.  Remington  really  intended  to  endorse 
the  compressed  pills  as  superior  to  ail  other  ready-made  pills  of  our 
day,  he  represents  a  machine  in  a  wood-cut  at  the  latter  part  of  his 
paper,  for  making  a  pill  that  he  has  published  as  a  third  rate  pill  in 
point  of  solubility,  which  machine  I  find  by  tracing  its  history,  is 
based  on  a  machine  found  by  Professor  Remington  among  the  stock 
which  he  purchased  from  the  estate  of  the  late  A.  Mosely,  a 
graduate  of  our  college,  and  his  predecessor  in  business.  Machines 
made  after  this  model  have  been  offered  for  sale  by  different  parties, 
one  of  them  by  Messrs.  H.  C.  Blair's  Sons,  styled  the  "  Remington 
Pill  Press."  The  machines,  four  of  which  I  have  experimented 
with,  and  find  that  they  are  not  practically  up  to  the  standard  for 
doing  what  they  represent  to  do.  A  pill  may  be  made  by  the  machines 
with  materials  of  a  heavy  or  moist  character,  but  not  so  readily  with 
light  dry  substances,  as  I  found  that  the  machines  required  cleaning 
between  every  one  or  two  pills  made,  with  the  chance  of  breaking 
them   between    the    dies^    and  in  my  judgment,  endorsed  by  the 
and  sugar  coated  quinia  pills  being  disintegrated,  present  the  quinia  in  the  state  of 
powder,  and  consequently  with  a  very  large  surface,  so  that  its  chances  of  dissolving 
rapidly  in  the  stomach,  appear  to  be  far  better  than  those  of  the  compressed  pill. — 
Editor  Amer.  Jour.  Phar. 
1  I  have,  however,  seen  an  improvement  in  one  of  the  machines  made  at  Mr. 
Remington's  suggestion,  which  obviates  the  difficulty  mentioned,  as  far  as  I  had 
time  to  determine. — S.  C. 
