Am'MJa0rUrx8P76arm  }       Ready-Made  Pills  of  Our  Day.  1 1 5 
odor  of  grease,  evidencing  the  fact  of  the  presence  of  some  foreign 
matter  in  their  composition.  The  objection  that  the  pressure  used  in 
making  a  compressed  pill  renders  it  so  compact  and  hard  as  to  inter- 
fere with  its  solubility,  was  met  by  a  microscopical  examination,  which 
shows  that  they  are  quite  porous,  which  fact  must  practically  aid  in 
their  solution  or  disintegration.  The  soluble  pills,  so-called,  from 
Schieffelin  &  Co.,  of  New  York,  are  a  handsome-looking  pill,  but  are 
open  to  the  same  odjection  as  the  gelatin  coated  pills,  viz.,  irregularity 
in  dissolving,  requiring  from  6  to  24  hours,  swelling  up  in  some  in- 
stances as  large  as  raisins,  thereby  materially  interfering  with  the  action 
of  the  solvent.  The  sugar-coated  pills  were  taken  from  stock  recently 
purchased  from  Messrs.  Bullock  &  Crenshaw,  W.  R.  Warner  &  Co. 
and  Hance  Bros.  &  White,  all  of  this  city.  They  required  from  15 
to  60  minutes  to  remove  the  coating,  with  evidence,  in  the  iodide  of 
potassium  pills,  of  the  presence  of  gum  tragacanth  and  extract  of 
gentian  as  excipients,  swelling  up  after  five  hours  as  large  as  hazel  nuts. 
The  pill  proper  was,  in  all  casses,  hard  and  brittle,  which  must  neces- 
sarily happen  on  account  of  the  heat  employed  in  coating  the  pill. 
Hence  is  it  practical  to  suppose  a  sugar-coated  pill  to  be  as  readily  dis- 
solved as  one  made  without  coating,  with  the  ingredients  merely  pressed 
together  without  any  adherent  substance  ?  The  globules  or  pearls  from 
E.  Fougera  &  Co.,  of  New  York,  are  gelatin  capsules,  with  the  in- 
gredients in  a  powdered  form,  free  from  excipients,  and  required  from  30 
to  60  minutes  to  dissolve  their  coating.  Their  size  is  an  objection, 
however,  yet  they  include  in  their  list  liquids  such  as  apiol,  turpentine, 
ether,  phosphorated  oil,  &c,  and  the  pearls  should  be  classified  with 
Cachet  de  Pain,  and  not  as  pills.  They  are  perfectly  reliable,  and 
worthy  the  attention  of  the  profession.  The  Cachet  de  Pain  is,  no 
doubt,  an  elegant  mode  of  giving  medicine,  yet  it  is  already  murmured 
around  by  patients  that  they  make  a  bulky  dose. 
The  method  of  agitation  also  engaged  my  attention,  as  the  one 
adopted  by  Mr.  Jos.  P.  Remington  to  prove  the  solubility  of  the  pills. 
I  took  four  6J  oz.  bottles,  each  containing  4  fluidounces  of  water  at 
700  F.    In  each  bottle  I  placed  a  2  gr.  sulphate  of  quinia  pill  one 
made  with  glycerin  as  an  excipient,  another  B.  &  C.'s  sugar  coated 
another  McK.  &  R's  gelatin  coated,  another  Dunton's  compressed. 
The  bottles  were  attached  to  the  eccentric  rod  of  an  upright  steam 
engine,  and  speeded  up  to  350  revolutions  a  minute,  with  the  following 
results :    The  Dunton  compressed  was  dissolved  in  five  hours,  the 
