TABELLAE DULCES.
TO BE SUCCESSFUL, sweet tablets must meet the following requirements:
1. They must be perfectly delicious sweets, attractive in form, color,
and odor; and free from the slightest suspicion of disagreeable or
medicinal taste.
2. They must disintegrate rapidly in the mouth; for a sick child will
usually not suck candy as a healthy youngster would.
3. To constitute a real advance in therapeutics, it must be possible
for the average pharmacist to prepare them extemporaneously, so that
the physician may be able to fit the medicament to suit the case,
and that the pharmacist may not be forced to carry in stock a large
assortment of these more or less perishable goods.
In view of these exacting requirements, it may seem remarkable
that over fifty different medicaments are at present available for
administration in the form of sweet tablets. This has been accomplished
by taking advantage of the fact that some medicines are practically
tasteless; that modern synthetic chemistry has enriched our resources
in this direction by the production of a large number of tasteless,
or almost tasteless, and yet active substances; and that many of the
isolated active principles of drugs are easily disguised. In some
cases a chemical trick is successful, e. g., using a little alkali
or a little acid to render the substance less soluble in the mouth.
Some of the bitterest alkaloids, e.g., strychnine, have been rendered
available for candy medication by the use of finely powdered fuller's
earth, or of Lloyd's Reagent, to be described later. Quite a number of
almost insoluble substances of slight but lingering taste can be made
perfectly pleasant by saccharinization.