Pills (A Brief History)

Oh those pills! Those small round or oblong solid masses of medicine that come in an array of colours. These are indeed medical miracles that are meant to be swallowed. They have the ability to ease pain, control diseases and cure many ailments. Such little wonders that have developed over millennia.

modern mass-produced pills

Evidence suggests the first pills were created around 1,500 BC in Egypt. At that time, ingredients would have been mixed, then formed into little balls with nimble fingers using excipients such as clay, bread, honey, grease and/or tree resins to bind everything together.

A thousand years later, some pills began to be indented with trademarks as exemplified by Terra Sigillata (Sealed Earth) that originated from the Greek Island of Lemnos. At that time, once each year small governmental and religious dignitaries bore witness to a particular clay being dug and removed from a pit on a Lemnian hillside. This clay was then rolled into small pastilles, impressed with a seal by a priestess, sun-dried and finally distributed on a commercial basis to the wider community. This practice has evolved into the unique imprinted codes on pills today that identify the type of medication, its ingredients and also the manufacturer.

The innovative Romans had pill-making equipment as evidenced by an object at the British Museum, a stone with long flat grooves. The pill-maker would press the medicinal mixture into the grooves, make long wormy snake-like strings, then evenly cut them to make the pills.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age (1700s) the first pill-making machine was developed and soon became a must have for any chemist in the 18th, 19th and into the early 20th centuries. This machine would allow the chemist to make it possible to produce a higher quantity of pills quickly.

top half of a Victorian pill making machine
Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum (photo: Peter Dyer)

At the time pill making was a laboursome process even with the machine. Instructed by the doctor, the chemist would have to weigh out and grind up the ingredients with a mortar and pestle, then add a binder which in the Victorian times was typically soap, milk powder or glucose syrup.

mortar and pestle
Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum (photo: Peter Dyer)

In 1843, Englishman William Brockedon invented and was granted a patent for a device that would become the first tablet press leading to the modern day press and mass production that one would see in the twentieth century. Much experimenting was going on during this time. In the later part of the 1800s Silas Burroughs explored disintegration properties between conventionally manufactured, partly coated pills and compressed powders.

Nowadays, according to Thomas Processing, ‘the most common tablet manufacturing process techniques are wet granulation, dry granulation, and direct compression” requiring granulators, mixing equipment, drying machinery, and coating systems to achieve production of tablets.

How far the world has come from hand mixing and rolling a tiny medicinal sphere between the fingers.

With ‘pills’ being food for thought, I was inspired to have another go at some blackout poetry. I really enjoy the challenge.

This first one is extracted from Antique Medical Instruments by E. Bennion.

Pill Box

rare one
in time art
unique

hold many
a globular shape

made by
eighteenth century
pharmacists

expired makers

This piece came from an article by Elsevier published in International Journal of Pharmaceutics Volume 581.

act

process

develop
act

mix
connect
integrate

interact
evaluate
process

blend
experiment
analyze

the eccentric
raw drug
us

And finally, here’s one using the beginning of Gaikwad and Kshirsagar’s Review on Tablet in Tablet techniques.

feel       taste
art and literature
focus on form
review techniques

release

Thank you for reading.
Kate J

Sources:

* Elsevier, B.V., 2020. End to end continuous manufacturing of conventional compressed tablets: From flow synthesis to tableting through integrated crystallization and filtration. International Journal of Pharmeceutics Volume 581. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378517320302817 (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Gaikwadd S.S. and Kshirsagar S.J., 2020. Review on Tablet in Tablet techniques, Beni-Suef University Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences 9, Article Number 1. https://bjbas.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43088-019-0027-7 (Accessed 1 August 2023).
*Gallway City Museum, 2023. Collections Spotlight – Victorian Pill Making Machine. https://galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/collections-spotlight-victorian-pill-making-machine/?locale=en (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*LeDoux, M., 2016. The history of compounds, extraction and tablet compression. https://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/contract-manufacturing/history-compounds-extraction-and-tablet-compression (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Mestel, R., 2002. The Colorful History of Pills Can Fill Many a Tablet. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-25-he-booster25-story.html (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Museum of Healthcare at Kingston, 2023. From the Collection Pill Machine. https://artefact.museumofhealthcare.ca/?p=380 (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Thomas Processing, 2022. How Tablets Are Manufactured. https://thomasprocessing.com/how-tablets-are-manufactured/ (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Thom, R. 2014. Terra Sigillata, An Early “Trademarked” Drug. https://hannemanarchive.com/2014/12/12/history-of-pharmacy/ (Accessed 30 July 2023).