The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1894-04-04

NEDYCKyE IN TABLEr8.
from the Nssg York San Of FssrEa,yS s, s61s
Increasing Use Of Drugs In This Fsrn
Instead Of Compromising by
Prescription.
A comparatively recent invention, vastly
extended in its application within three or
four years, has wrought curious change
in the practice OF medicine. Country phv-
scians 100 years age, when there were
few druggists outside OF considerable towns.
carried in their saddle bags or medicine
chests - variety OF drugs. pills.
powders, M ~ potions, lotions and
what not. VIZ Such physicians made
up their ~ own prescriptions and
furnished their patients with medicines. The
use OF medicines in the form OF tablets
tends more and more toward return Of
modern physicians to the methods of their
predecessors. Physicians everywhere now
write fewer prescriptions than they wrote
ten years ago, or even two years
ago. and ~ the use OF medicine
in the ~ ~ form OF tablets Is ex-
tending && 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 va
riety Of drugs and prescriptions thus pre-
pared was extended until now
| I includes ga thousands of COM
ound SKI rs y Any physician may
now have &A> almost any prescrip-
ton of his own made up into tablets. Tho
usual requirement is that at least 5000 tab
lets shall be ordered. Many well-known
prescriptions of famous physicians have ale
ready attained wide celebrity in the medi-
cal world through their use in tablet form.
hundreds of liquid - prescriptions
re thus used by MlA saturat-
ing inert material NEZ withf the
mixture, just as HOMEOPATHIC
remedies are prepared in the form of sugar
pellets. The tablet factories are constantly
experimenting with a view to reducing fur
ther drugs and prescriptions to tablet form.
They are ready TO vary known prescriptions
in accordance with -. he fancy
of individual M'Vh physicians.
and to combine one NV or m orc
prescriptions in single tab
let The general use of tablets instead of
prescriptions has greatly simplihed the
practice of medicine. The physician. in-
stead of writing prescription and instructs
ing his patient TO have 1t compounded by .
druggist, leaves the necessary number OF tab
lets with instructions as to the
time and d manner of ~@A taking.
Nearly every physician \A~Z Is pro-
yided with some such tablets,
and many use them in great quantities.
Tons OF drugs are now put up in this form.
1t Is the wholesale method of modern life
applied to the preparation of medicines.
Apothecaries have felt the effects of the
change in practice .-x- through the les
sening in the number of pre-
scriptions to be Vsr/ compounded.
For the patient il has cheapened
the cost of doctoring, for the physician
obtains the tablets at so low rate that
he usually makes no charge for those sup.
piled TO his patients. New as
the use a. IA of tablets is, the form
of the ~ F tablet has been
greatly E.S improved since tlssir in
PRODUCTION into medical practice. Tablets
are smaller and more compressed than they
were few years ago. The machinery for
making x them originally
was, and MAM perhaps still Is, con-
trolled by ~ IN ~ a single w ole-
sale drug ~exY house a this city,
but there are many manufacturers of tab
lets here and elsewhere. When the pat
entees first began to call their products to
the attention - of physicians, the
tablets very ~ ~ ~ slowly made their
way. because N ~ the patentSes were
moi widely % known in Ire med
icaI profession Then they associated them-
selves~vith 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 <.rw.> name outsid c
the mt edical ~ "a profession. A 5
they are not - patent medi-
cines they are 2 not advertised in
other than medical newspapers. They come
to physicians with label that proclaims the
ingredients and their proportions. Physi-
clans have the good repute of the manu-
facturer as guarantee that tablets are made
of pure drugs and carefully compounded.
The best tablet - manufactures
employ skilled AZ - and careful
apot hecaries ~ - and buy their
drugs in large = quantities dt.
rectly from manufacturers.
INTERESTING SECRET HISTORY OF AN OLD
TINE REMEDY.
A certain well-known preparation Is 50
largely prescribed by physicians that its use
by them may be said to be universal. Con-
versationaly 1t is spoken of among them
selves as the X. & 5. Compo." If you
are i'll and call the doctor, no
matter what else IN you get, you
are m o derately 49, certain to get
some one of the forms of the
"R. & s." prescription. Its use has been
growing more general for hundred years,
and has been vastly increased of late b.
slight improvements found to be important
in effects. The prescription, especially in
rural districts. is usually prepared in fluid
form, sometimes in powders but of late il
has been found possible to prepare it in tab
lets, the form now so popular with physi-
clans for all standard m d l.
e.: ;;;: ,,:i sS 8:
forms of this preparation that a single
manufacturing chemist in New York City
made and sold $4,000 pounds of these
tablets in the year ISo3--and this, be II
borne in mind, was to physicians alone, or
TO fill orders from dealers from whom phy-
a;cionc obtain fbair ettpnifec Everv f,hvsi-