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.
CHAPTER III.
THE USES OF SWEET TABLETS.
IT MAY seem strange that modern pharmacy which boasts of so many elegant and palatable preparations suitable for adults, has thus far done so little to render medicine more acceptable to children; and yet attractiveness and palatability are even more important for the little ones than for the grown-ups. Syrups have hitherto been our chief aids in making medicines more pleasant for children. Unfortunately, however, many a child has had its palate offended by liquid medicines to such a degree that it abhors spoon-medicine of any kind, and will struggle even against the most palatable. When one witnesses the struggling of the average child against the average medicine, one cannot but wonder whether at times the struggle does not do more harm than the medicine can do good, and wish that we had other means of administering medicines to the little ones. As all children love candy, this would seem the form most desirable for them. For one who has not used candy medication there is a revelation in store in the positive enjoyment and eagerness with which children take these sweet tablets. And many a petted child that has grown up into a sensitive woman, who believes she cannot swallow a pill, also cannot and will not take medicine. It so happens that just these are often excessively fond of candy and will take candy medicine. Another use for candy medication is in the treatment of the insane, who frequently will not take medicine, but may take it in candy form.
It may be of interest to see how many indications may be met, confining oneself entirely to the list of candy medicaments: