Candy Medication :: CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

THE IDEA of presenting medicine in candy form is really very old. The term confection, which originally meant a medicinal compound being derived from the Latin word "conficere," to put together, has been applied since the days of classical antiquity to mixtures of medicinal substances with saccharine matter. The only official relics of this once very extensive class of preparations are the confection of rose and the confection of senna; both of which, however, are also practically obsolete. The reason for this is not difficult to find. Neither of them come up to our modern ideas of a confection. We may officially call them a confection, but a youngster would be disrespectful enough to disagree with the pharmacopoeia.

More closely akin to candy are lozenges, and yet they are not real candy. The only one among them that is pleasant is the santonin lozenge; and it is the only one that is popular. An especially good imitation of candy form are the deservedly popular so-called German worm lozenges. It was acquaintance with these that led the writer to seek for other real candy medicaments. He could find only two such upon the market: viz., Calomel Tablets under the name of "Aromatic Calomel," and Phenolphthalein Tablets under various fanciful trade-names, such as "Purgen," "Phenolax," etc., unless "Candy Cathartic Cascarets," and the French candy laxative known as "Tamar Indien" were also to be included.

Convinced that administration in candy form would be ideal for children, the author took a number of years ago a course of instruction with a candy-maker, in the hope of finding in the confectioner's art some new form of pleasant administration for medicine. He made sulphur taffy and cod-liver oil chocolate creams;[1] but these and a large number of other attempts were unsuccessful. It may be of interest, in this connection, to note that, in 1911, Sir James Sawyer[2] published in "The Lancet" a process for the production of what he calls "cremulae" or medicated chocolate creams. They were prepared by evaporating a mixture of sugar and of milk to the consistency of paste, in which various medicaments might be incorporated, and which is then covered with chocolate, as in the popular chocolate drop. This is, as will be seen, a troublesome process. The author's studies in the candy shop seemed to point to "fondant" as the most suitable candy form for purposes of medication. "Fondant", however, has the disadvantage of becoming hard with age. Free from this objection and closely similar to the "fondant" is a rather lightly compressed tablet made of finely powdered cane sugar. And so finally the tablet form was chosen as the best and most convenient for candy medication—a form which was already in successful use, as has been stated, for the administration of calomel and of phenolphthalein. For such tablets the term tabellae dulces,[3] or sweet tablets, might be proposed.

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