The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-02-09
MEDICINE IN TABLETS.
Use of Drugs In This Form Instead of
Compromising by Prescription.
New York Sun.

New YORK sun
A comparatively recent invention, vastly
extended in Its application within three or
four years, has wrought a curious change
in the practice of medicine. Country ply
sicians one hundred years ago, when there
were few druggists outside of considerable
towns. carried in their saddle bags or medi-
cine chests, d variety of drugs, pills, pow
ders, potions, lotions and what not. Such
physicians made up their own prescriptions
and furnished their patients with medicines.
The use of medicines in the form of tab
let's tends more and more toward a return
of modern physicians to the methods OF
their predecessors. Physicians everywhe
now write fewer prescriptions than they
ago, and the use Of medicine i'm the form OF
tablets is extending every day.
1t is only ten or fifteen years since, COM
pressed tablets Of chlorate of potash began
TO be used. Other simple drugs were then
put up in tablet form, and gradually the
pared was extended until now it includes
thousands of compounds. Any physician
may now have almost any. prescription OF
his own made up into tablets. The usual
requirement is that at least 5000 tablets
shall be ordered. Many ~well-known pre-
scriptions Of famous physicians have al
icine world through their use In tablet
form. Hundreds of liquid prescriptions are
thus used by saturating inert material with
= the mixture, just as homeopathic remedies
are prepared in the form of sugar pellets.
The tablet factories are constantly expert
drugs and prescriptions to tablet form.
They are ready to vary known prescrip-
tons In accordance with the fancy of in
dividual physicians, and to combine one or
more prescriptions In a single tablet.
The general use of tablets instead of pre-
tice of medicine. The physician. instead of
writing a prescription and instructing his
patient to have it compounded by a drug
gist, leaves the necessary number Of tab
lets with instructions as 10 the time and
manner OF taking. Nearly every physician
is provided with some such tablets, and
N ~ rroa thai IN of.0nf ma Tnno ~
drugs are now put up in this form. II is
the wholesale method Of modern life ap-
piled to the preparation or medicines. The
change I'm practice through the lessening
In the number of prescriptions TO be COM
pounded. For the patient it has cheapened
the cost of doctoring, because the physi-
clan obtains the tablets at so low a rate
that he usually makes no charge for those
supplied to his patients.
New as the use of tablets is, the form
of the tablet has been greatly improved
since their introduction into medical prac-
tice. Tablets are smaller and more COM
pressed than they were a few years ago.
The machinery for making them originally
was. and perhaps still is. controlled by
but there are many manufacturers of tab
lets here and elsewhere. When the patent
the attention of physicians the tablets very
slowly made their way, because the pat
entees were not widely known in the med
selves with a famous drug house, and the
tablets soon began TO go.
Only the simpler drugs and remedies put
up in tablet form are accessible to the
general public. The compounds are not
even known by name outside the medical
profession. AS they are not patent med
icines, they are not advertised in other
than medical newspapers. They come to
physicians with a label that proclaims the
Ingredients and their proportions. Physi-
clans ave as guarantee that tablets are
made, of pure, drugs, and carefully COM
pounded only the good repute of the manu-
facturer. The best tablet manufacturers
however. employ skilled and careful apoth-
ecarieS and buy their drugs in large guam
titles directly from manufacturers. There
is, of course, a possibility of mistakes,
and the results of error might be appalling,
of patients.