514  THOUGHTS  ON  "MANUFACTURING  PHARMACY," 
ON  COATING  PILLS  EXTEMPORANEOUSLY. 
By  C.  F.  G.  Collins. 
To  the  Editor  : 
Dear  Sir  : — Noticing  in  the  last  Journal  your  wish  for  some 
method  of  sugar-coating  pills  extemporaneously,  I  send  you  the  fol- 
lowing, which  I  have  used  for  some  time,  and  consider  preferable 
to  any  other  that  I  have  tried  in  my  experiments,  as  giving  the  best 
resu'ts  in  the  shortest  time  : 
Take  finely  powdered  Sugar,  3  parts, 
"  "       Gum  Arabic,      1  part. 
Mix.  Spread  a  sufficient  quantity  of  this  powder  on  one  'end  of 
a  pill  tile,  and  have  a  little  simple  syrup  on  the  other,  coat  the  pills 
with  syrup,  then  roll  them  in  the  powder,  repeat  if  necessary,  and 
roll  in  a  little  calc.  magnesia  or  sugar  of  milk,  to  prevent  their  ad- 
hering while  moist. 
After  a  little  practice,  pills  may  be  coated  in  this  way  in  about 
the  same  length  of  time  that  it  ordinarily  takes  to  roll  them,  and 
though  they  may  not  be  quite  equal  in  appearance  to  those  coated 
in  large  quantities  by  the  usual  method,  I  think  they  answer  the 
purpose  equally  as  well. 
Beloit,  Wis.,  Sept.  30th,  1858. 
THOUGHTS  ON  «  MANUFACTURING  PHARMACY"  IN  ITS  BEAR- 
ING ON  THE  PRACTICE  OF  PHARMACY,  AND  THE  CHARACTER 
AND  QUALIFICATIONS  OF  PHARMACEUTISTS. 
By  William  Procter,  Jr. 
It  has  been  frequently  a  subject  of  serious  reflection  with  the 
writer  what  influence  the  modern  custom  of  manufacturing  galenical 
preparations  on  a  large  scale,  has  had,  and  will  increasingly  have, 
on  the  Pharmacy  and  Pharmaceutists  of  the  United  States.  It  is 
well  known  that  vegetable  extracts,  fluid  extracts,  pills  of  all  the 
officinal  formulae,  plasters,  cerates,  compound  powders,  in  fact 
nearly  all  the  empyrical  organic  preparations  of  any  note  are  now 
made  by  various  large  manufacturing  establishments.  The  formulae 
employed  by  these  makers  do  not  agree  with  each  other,  nor  are 
they  generally  in  accordance  with  the  Pharmacopoeia,  either  as 
regards  medicinal  strength  or  manipulation.    With  variable  degrees 
