Pills

Some time ago, I went to collect a prescription for someone and while I was waiting, I looked around the chemist and happened to notice the vast array of medication, especially all the different tablets and pills. There were all kinds of pills for headaches, painkillers of various sorts, pills to keep you awake, to make you sleep, pills for hay fever, asthma and medications for all different kinds of goodness knows what. Indeed, it struck me that people, not just in Britain but globally, seem to take pills for anything and everything in order to get through the day and the night. In such an age it is hardly surprising that washing machines and dishwashers also need tablets to function on a daily basis.

I began to wonder when pills were invented as they seem to be in every aspect of human life. According to the Los Angeles Times, pills have been around since 1500BC and were first found in Ancient Egypt. Prior to this, medications were mostly crushed seeds, plant resins and leaves which were then dissolved in beer. The Romans used to coat their pills in gold or silver which meant these pills went through the human digestive system without releasing any of their medicinal goodness. A bit like a Salt Bea Steak perhaps and maybe just as expensive.

The Roman scholar Pliny (23-79 AD) wrote about pilule which is where the word pill is derived from. Pills in the modern sense were only really created in 1843 by the British inventor William Brockedon, who patented a machine which was capable of compressing powder in to the pill form which we see and use today. As technology improved the pill making machines became more complex and are now able to make tablets of any shape, size or colour by the million. Pills also need to be strong enough to survive the process of pill making and soft enough for the stomach to digest, which is no easy feat.

pills - a selection

The top ten most common used or prescribed pills in Britain today include paracetamol, statins, aspirin, propranolol and codeine. Pills are being prescribed and used by increasing numbers of people in Britain not including the NHS spending, leading to £9.1 billion on prescription pills and over a billion prescriptions being issued in 2018. These figures are likely to be even higher as humanity stumbles through the post Covid era.

It would seem that, to paraphrase Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame, taking pills is as normal as having a cup of tea and this looks like it will not change any time soon. Indeed, pills play a part in popular culture in films such as 'The Matrix ' starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburn. In essence, 'The Matrix ' is a film about a dystopian simulated reality where humans are unknowingly imprisoned and their bodies used as a bioelectric energy source by and for intelligent machines. 'The Matrix ' has a scene where a freed human, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) offers the hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) a choice between taking a red pill or a blue pill. If Neo takes the blue pill, he ends up back in the Matrix and living his unknowing life as a bioelectric power source. If he takes the red pill, he stays in the “Wonderland ” of reality and Morpheus will show him how “deep the rabbit hole goes. ”

red pill or blue pill - still from The Matrix, 1999

The concept of taking a red pill or a blue pill has now spilled over into the “culture wars” of America where “taking the red pill” or being “red pilled” meant people could see the political biases in society including the mainstream media thereby becoming independent in thought. Conversely, “taking the blue pill” or being “blue pilled” means accepting without argument the current unreal biased situation.

It just so happens that in America the colour of the Republican party is red and the colour of the Democrat party is blue. There are no points for guessing how being “red pilled” or “blue pilled” plays out at election time and in the culture wars there.

Perhaps one day there will be a pill that allows or enables people to see “the truth” and everyone can live in peace and harmony. Or would this be a gold cage rather than a steel cage and humanity would still be imprisoned? Maybe it depends on who makes the pills and what their motives are. Or maybe we should just open our eyes and seek the “truth” for ourselves.

Pills

Red or blue, it’s up to you,
which one to take, which one
is fake, will shake you awake
or will keep you from looking
around, hold you wrapped in
the cold clutch of dystopian
dread, where all is fine, having
a good time, unknowing,
uncaring, no idea how to be
daring, to seek new vistas, what
new life you can have, can
achieve rather than be deceived,
wallowing in ignorance, dissonance,
just listening to the same old,
same old, blissfully unaware
of what’s really out there.
Red or blue, it’s up to you.

                                        DM, 2023

Thanks for reading, Dermot

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Pills and Others

When I was six or seven I was given a bottle of little torpedo shaped medication and told to swallow two with water, the bottle was stuffed with them and I had no idea these were to save my life and would be a lifetimes dedication. Make sure you take the full course was the mantra instilled and back then that seemed an enormous number to take at a time particularly when you are so young. They were antibiotics of course, I think the first in my case were Streptomycin. I remember being interested in the names as I progressed to other variations but the link was to the earlier discovery of penicillin. 

I will be forever grateful to both Alexander Fleming and Selman Waksman, who it was said was the sole discoverer of Streptomyces in the 1940’s and who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1952.In fact the antibiotic synthesised by the soil organism Streptomyces griseus was discovered by American biochemists Albert Schatz and Elizabeth Bugie in 1943. The drug acts by interfering with the ability of a microorganism to synthesise several proteins. Streptomycin is used to treat bacterial infections, particularly TB.

 

I was probably a bit of a Guinea pig and given far more per infection than I would be today. The courses are streamlined now and come in pill form. Then, my mother worried about my ingesting masses of plastic, decided to cut the capsules in two, empty powder onto a teaspoon and expect me to swallow. I can remember that clagging dry mass in my throat now and I was “happy” when allowed to swallow the plastic again. 

My mother’s story was the tragic one. She had various ailments and took all kinds of pills and medicines, the GP visiting the house produced a syringe and after injecting her with Adrenalin, I think, left it on the mantelpiece, to give me a permanent fear of needles. I was woken one glorious May Sunday by my Vice Principal while I was at College to be told she had died. She was only fifty two, I was poleaxed as stupidly this hadn’t crossed my mind. Whether the drugs gave her longer life or shortened it will never be known, but it has given me a horror of casual and unnecessary pill taking and I avoid it when I can. 

Some 

sort of 

inheritance 

You have left your pot 

drugs that kept you going,

 

in the reaches of my mind.

 

I drag it out, strip off the lid

 

witness again the chemists’ 

dreamscape of colours 

it takes to carry a life 

yours and mine. 

Thanks for reading ,Cynthia

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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).

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