What bitter pills, / Compos'd of real ills, / Men swallow down to purchase one false good.
Apothecaries would not sugar their pills unless they were bitter.
Pillen muss man schlingen, nicht kauen=--Pills must be swallowed, not chewed.
If the pills were pleasant, they would not be gilded.
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.--_George Eliot._
Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers, And we're loved everywhere we go. We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth, At ten thousand dollars a show. We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills, But the thrill we've never known, Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie, Who embroiders on my jeans. I got my poor old gray-haired daddy, Drivin' my limousine. Now it's all designed, to blow our minds, But our minds won't be really be blown; Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies, Who'll do anything we say. We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way. We got all the friends that money can buy, So we never have to be alone. And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture, On the cover of the Rolling Stone. -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.]
NATHAN ... your PARENTS were in a CARCRASH!! They're VOIDED -- They COLLAPSED They had no CHAINSAWS ... They had no MONEY MACHINES ... They did PILLS in SKIMPY GRASS SKIRTS ... Nathan, I EMULATED them ... but they were OFF-KEY ...
A New Way of Taking Pills</p> A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment. -- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
"Out of a cupboard," said I. "And I saw pistols in it,--and jam,--and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up with candles."
"Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twenty-five pound perannium fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she have twenty pound down. Mrs.--what's the name of them wild beasts with humps, old chap?"
In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.
Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two stanzas of it will do:
What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly obeying the doctor's orders?
"Oh, no, monsieur," replied Monte Cristo; "I do not thus betray my enjoyments to the vulgar. I am a tolerable chemist, and prepare my pills myself."
"Of whom I bought her," said Monte Cristo, "as I told you, Albert, with the emerald which formed a match to the one I had made into a box for the purpose of holding my hashish pills."
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering--while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*
"Oh, yes," returned Monte Cristo; "I make no secret of it. It is a mixture of excellent opium, which I fetched myself from Canton in order to have it pure, and the best hashish which grows in the East--that is, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed in equal proportions, and formed into pills. Ten minutes after one is taken, the effect is produced. Ask Baron Franz d'Epinay; I think he tasted them one day."
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.
What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.
"Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?" continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage.
With the apparent expanding number of citizens at or below the poverty line and, at the same time, the incredible fortunes being established by entertainers, athletes, financiers, investors and the like, it seems to me there has never been a greater need for enabling more citizens to also have a “piece of the action.” Again, what is true in this country is equally true throughout the world. [Letter to Norman G. Kurland, November 16, 1992.]
"No, monsieur," returned the count; and he drew from his pocket a marvellous casket, formed out of a single emerald and closed by a golden lid which unscrewed and gave passage to a small greenish colored pellet about the size of a pea. This ball had an acrid and penetrating odor. There were four or five more in the emerald, which would contain about a dozen. The casket passed around the table, but it was more to examine the admirable emerald than to see the pills that it passed from hand to hand. "And is it your cook who prepares these pills?" asked Beauchamp.
As shown above, the poppy has been grown in almost every district of China. In 1906 it was chiefly cultivated in the following provinces: Yun-nan, Kwei-chow, Sze-ch'uen, Kan-suh, Shen-si, Shan-si, Shan-tung, Ho-nan, Kiang-su (northern part) and Cheh-kiang. The poppy is first mentioned in Chinese literature in a book written in the first half of the 8th century A.D., and its medicinal qualities are referred to in the _Herbalist's Treasury_ of 973. It was not then nor for centuries later grown in China for the preparation of opium.[19] There is no evidence to show that the Chinese ever took opium in the shape of pills (otherwise than medicinally). The cultivation of the poppy for the manufacture of opium began in China in the 17th century, but it was not until after 1796, when the importation of foreign opium was declared illegal, that the plant was cultivated on an extensive scale. After 1906 large areas which had been devoted to the poppy were given over to other crops, in consequence of the imperial edict aimed at the suppression of opium-smoking (see § _History_). Entry: III
The PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY is CRYING for an END to BURT REYNOLDS movies!!
Collections of his songs with the music appeared during his lifetime, the most complete being the 1719-1720 edition (6 vols.) of _Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy_. The best known of the twenty-nine pieces of his which actually found their way to the stage were _Love for Money; or The Boarding School_ (Theatre Royal, 1691), _The Marriage-Hater Match'd_ (1692), and _The Comical History of Don Quixote_, in three parts (1694, 1694 and 1696), which earned the especial censure of Jeremy Collier. In his burlesque opera, _Wonders in the Sun; or the Kingdom of the Birds_ (1706, music by G.B. Draghi), the actors were dressed as parrots, crows, &c. Entry: D
The patient should at once be sent to bed and kept there, and allowed for a while nothing stronger than milk and water or milk and lime water. But if bleeding has recently taken place no food whatever should be allowed by the stomach, and the feeding should be by nutrient enemata. As the symptoms quiet down, eggs may be given beaten up with milk, and later, bread and milk and home-made broths and soups. Thus the diet advances to chicken and vegetables rubbed through a sieve, to custard pudding and bread and butter. As regards medicines, iron is the most useful, but no pills of any sort should be given. Under the influence of rest and diet most gastric ulcers get well. The presence of healthy-looking scars upon the surface of the stomach, which are constantly found in operating upon the interior of the abdomen, or as revealed in post-mortem examinations, are evidence of the truth of this statement. It is unlikely that under the treatment just described perforation of the stomach will take place, and if the surgeon is called in to assist he will probably advise that operation is inadvisable. Moreover, he knows that if he should open the abdomen to search for an ulcer of the stomach he might fail to find it; more than that, his search might also be in vain if he opened the stomach itself and examined the interior. Serious haemorrhages, however, may make it necessary that a prompt and thorough search should be made in order that the surgeon may endeavour to locate the ulcer, and, having found it, secure the damaged vessel and save the patient from death by bleeding. Entry: GASTRIC
The British Pharmacopeia contains a compound extract of colocynth, which no one ever uses; a compound pill--dose 4 to 8 grains--in which oil of cloves is included in order to relieve the griping caused by the drug; and the Pilula Colocynthidis et Hyoscyami, which contains 2 parts of the compound pill to 1 of extract of hyoscyamus. This is by far the best preparation, the hyoscyamus being added to prevent the pain and griping which is attendant on the use of colocynth alone. The official dose of this pill is 4 to 8 grains, but the most effective and least disagreeable manner in which to obtain its action is to give four two-grain pills at intervals of an hour or so. Entry: COLOCYNTH
_Antimony in Medicine._--So far back as Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, antimonial preparations were in great vogue as medicinal agents, and came to be so much abused that a prohibition was placed upon their employment by the Paris parlement in 1566. Metallic antimony was utilized to make goblets in which wine was allowed to stand so as to acquire emetic properties, and "everlasting" pills of the metal, supposed to act by contact merely, were administered and recovered for future use after they had fulfilled their purpose. Antimony compounds act as irritants both externally and internally. Tartar emetic (antimony tartrate) when swallowed, acts directly on the wall of the stomach, producing vomiting, and after absorption continues this effect by its action on the medulla. It is a powerful cardiac depressant, diminishing both the force and frequency of the heart's beat. It depresses respiration, and in large doses lowers temperature. It depresses the nervous system, especially the spinal cord. It is excreted by all the secretions and excretions of the body. Thus as it passes out by the bronchial mucous membrane it increases the amount of secretion and so acts as an expectorant. On the skin its action is that of a diaphoretic, and being also excreted by the bile it acts slightly as a cholagogue. Summed up, its action is that of an irritant, and a cardiac and nervous depressant. But on account of this depressant action it is to be avoided for women and children and rarely used for men. Entry: R
EDWIN, JOHN (1749-1790), English actor, was born in London on the 10th of August 1749, the son of a watchmaker. As a youth, he appeared in the provinces, in minor parts; and at Bath in 1768 he formed a connexion with a Mrs Walmsley, a milliner, who bore him a son, but whom he afterwards deserted. His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1776 as Flaw in Samuel Foote's _The Cozeners_, but when George Colman took over the theatre he was given better parts and became its leading actor. In 1779 he was at Covent Garden, and played there or at the Haymarket until his death on the 31st of October 1790. Ascribed to him are _The Last Legacy of John Edwin_, 1780; _Edwin's Jests_ and _Edwin's Pills to Purge Melancholy_. Entry: EDWIN
_H. niger_, _orientalis_, _viridis_, _foetidus_, and several other species of hellebore contain the glucosides _helleborin_, C36H42O6, and _helleboreïn_, C23H20O15, the former yielding glucose and _helleboresin_, C30H38O4, and the latter glucose and a violet-coloured substance _helleboretin_, C14H20O3. Helleborin is most abundant in _H. viridis_. A third and volatile principle is probably present in _H. foetidus_. Both helleborin and helleboreïn act poisonously on animals, but their decomposition-products helleboresin and helleboretin seem to be devoid of any injurious qualities. Helleborin produces excitement and restlessness, followed by paralysis of the lower extremities or whole body, quickened respiration, swelling and injection of the mucous membranes, dilatation of the pupil, and, as with helleboreïn, salivation, vomiting and diarrhoea. Helleboreïn exercises on the heart an action similar to that of digitalis, but more powerful, accompanied by at first quickened and then slow and laboured respiration; it irritates the conjunctiva, and acts as a sternutatory, but less violently than veratrine. Pliny states that horses, oxen and swine are killed by eating "black hellebore"; and Christison (_On Poisons_, p. 876, 11th ed., 1845) writes: "I have known severe griping produced by merely tasting the fresh root in January." Poisonous doses of hellebore occasion in man singing in the ears, vertigo, stupor, thirst, with a feeling of suffocation, swelling of the tongue and fauces, emesis and catharsis, slowing of the pulse, and finally collapse and death from cardiac paralysis. Inspection after death reveals much inflammation of the stomach and intestines, more especially the rectum. The drug has been observed to exercise a cumulative action. Its extract was an ingredient in Bacher's pills, an empirical remedy once in great repute in France. In British medicine the rhizome was formerly official. _H. foetidus_ was in past times much extolled as an anthelmintic, and is recommended by Bisset (_Med. Ess._, pp. 169 and 195, 1766) as the best vermifuge for children; J. Cook, however, remarks of it (_Oxford Mag._, March 1769, p. 99): "Where it killed not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms; but the worst of it is, it will sometimes kill both." This plant, of old termed by farriers ox-heel, setter-wort and setter-grass, as well as _H. viridis_ (Fr. _Herbe à séton_), is employed in veterinary surgery, to which also the use of _H. niger_ is now chiefly confined in Britain. Entry: _H
HOLLOWAY, THOMAS (1800-1883), English patent-medicine vendor and philanthropist, was born at Devonport, on the 22nd of September 1800, of humble parents. Until his twenty-eighth year he lived at Penzance, where he assisted his mother and brother in the baker's shop which his father, once a warrant officer in a militia regiment, had left them at his death. On coming to London he made the acquaintance of Felix Albinolo, an Italian, from whom he obtained the idea for the ointment which was to carry his name all over the world. The secret of his enormous success in business was due almost entirely to advertisement, in the efficacy of which he had great faith. He soon added the sale of pills to that of the ointment, and began to devote the larger part of his profits to advertising. Holloway's first newspaper announcement appeared on the 15th of October 1837, and in 1842 his yearly expenses for publicity had reached the sum of £5000; this expenditure went on steadily increasing as his sales increased, until it had reached the figure of £50,000 per annum at the time of his death. It is, however, chiefly by the two princely foundations--the Sanatorium and the College for Women at Egham (q.v.), endowed by Holloway towards the close of his life--that his name will be perpetuated, more than a million sterling having been set apart by him for the erection and permanent endowment of these institutions. In the deed of gift of the college the founder credited his wife, who died in 1875, with the advice and counsel that led him to provide what he hoped might ultimately become the nucleus of a university for women. The philanthropic and somewhat eccentric donor (he had an unconcealed prejudice against doctors, lawyers and parsons) died of congestion of the lungs at Sunninghill on the 26th of December 1883. Entry: HOLLOWAY
Unofficial preparations of iron are numberless, and some of them are very useful. Ferri hydroxidum (U.S.P.), the hydrated oxide of iron, made by precipitating ferric sulphate with ammonia, is used solely as an antidote in arsenical poisoning. The Syrupus ferri phosphatis Co. is well known as "Parrish's" syrup or chemical food, and the Pilulae ferri phosphatis cum quinina et strychnina, known as Easton's pills, form a solid equivalent to Easton's syrup. Entry: 13
Honey is mildly laxative in properties. Some few kinds are poisonous, as frequently the reddish honey stored by the Brazilian wasp _Nectarina_ (_Polistes_, Latr.[5]) _Lecheguana_, Shuck., the effects of which have been vividly described by Aug. de Saint-Hilaire,[6] the spring honey of the wild bees of East Nepaul, said to be rendered noxious by collection from rhododendron flowers (Hooker, _Himalayan Journals_, i. 190, ed. 1855), and the honey of Trebizond, which from its source, the blossoms, it is stated, of _Azalea pontica_ and _Rhododendron ponticum_ (perhaps to be identified with Pliny's _Aegolethron_), acquires the qualities of an irritant and intoxicant narcotic, as described by Xenophon (_Anab._ iv. 8). Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xxi. 45) describes as noxious a livid-coloured honey found in Persia and Gaetulia. Honey obtained from _Kalmia latifolia_, L., the calico bush, mountain laurel or spoon-wood of the northern United States, and allied species, is reputed deleterious; also that of the sour-wood is by some good authorities considered to possess undeniable griping properties; and G. Bidie (_Madras Quart. Journ. Med. Sci._, Oct, 1861, p. 399) mentions urtication, headache, extreme prostration and nausea, and intense thirst among the symptoms produced by a small quantity only of a honey from Coorg jungle. A South African species of _Euphorbia_, as was experienced by the missionary Moffat (_Miss. Lab._ p. 32, 1849), yields a poisonous honey. The nectar of certain flowers is asserted to cause even in bees a fatal kind of vertigo. As a demulcent and flavouring agent, honey is employed in the _oxymel_, _oxymel scillae_, _mel boracis_, _confectio piperis_, _conf. scammonii_ and _conf. terebinthinae_ of the _British Pharmacopoeia_. To the ancients honey was of very great importance as an article of diet, being almost their only available source of sugar. It was valued by them also for its medicinal virtues; and in recipes of the Saxon and later periods it is a common ingredient.[7] Of the eight kinds of honey mentioned by the great Indian surgical writer Susruta, four are not described by recent authors, viz. _argha_ or wild honey, collected by a sort of yellow bee; _chhatra_, made by tawny or yellow wasps; _audálaka_, a bitter and acrid honey-like substance found in the nest of white ants; and _dála_ or unprepared honey occurring on flowers. According to Hindu medical writers, honey when new is laxative, and when more than a year old astringent (U. C. Dutt, _Mat. Med. of the Hindus_, p. 277, 1877). Ceromel, formed by mixing at a gentle heat one part by weight of yellow wax with four of clarified honey, and straining, is used in India and other tropical countries as a mild stimulant for ulcers in the place of animal fats, which there rapidly become rancid and unfit for medicinal purposes. The _Koran_, in the chapter entitled "The Bee," remarks with reference to bees and their honey: "There proceedeth from their bellies a liquor of various colour, wherein is a medicine for men" (Sale's _Koran_, chap. xvi.). Pills prepared with honey as an excipient are said to remain unindurated, however long they may be kept (_Med. Times_, 1857, i. 269). Mead, of yore a favourite beverage in England (vol. iv. p. 264), is made by fermentation of the liquor obtained by boiling in water combs from which the honey has been drained. In the preparation of sack-mead, an ounce of hops is added to each gallon of the liquor, and after the fermentation a small quantity of brandy. Metheglin, or hydromel, is maufactured by fermenting with yeast a solution of honey flavoured with boiled hops (see Cooley, _Cyclop._). A kind of mead is largely consumed in Abyssinia (vol. i. p. 64), where it is carried on journeys in large horns (Stern, _Wanderings_, p. 317, 1862). In Russia a drink termed _lipez_ is made from the delicious honey of the linden. The _mulsum_ of the ancient Romans consisted of honey, wine and water boiled together. The _clarre_, or _piment_, of Chaucer's time was wine mixed with honey and spices, and strained till clear; a similar drink was _bracket_, made with wort of ale instead of wine. L. Maurial (_L'Insectologie Agricole_ for 1868, p. 206) reports unfavourably as to the use of honey for the production of alcohol; he recommends it, however, as superior to sugar for the thickening of liqueurs, and also as a means of sweetening imperfectly ripened vintages. It is occasionally employed for giving strength and flavour to ale. In ancient Egypt it was valued as an embalming material; and in the East, for the preservation of fruit, and the making of cakes, sweetmeats, and other articles of food, it is largely consumed. Grafts, seeds and birds' eggs, for transmission to great distances, are sometimes packed in honey. In India a mixture of honey and milk, or of equal parts of curds, honey and clarified butter (Sansk., _madhu-parka_), is a respectful offering to a guest, or to a bridegroom on his arrival at the door of the bride's father; and one of the purificatory ceremonies of the Hindus (Sansk., _madhu-prasana_) is the placing of a little honey in the mouth of a newborn male infant. Honey is frequently alluded to by the writers of antiquity as food for children; it is not to this, however, as already mentioned, that Isa. vii. 15 refers. Cream or fresh butter together with honey, and with or without bread, is a favourite dish with the Arabs. Entry: HONEY