Acidum Oxalicum

Powder well and mass with kaolin ointment or cocoa-butter.

Acidum Salicylicum

Reduce to fine powder and mass with glycerin of tragacanth.

Acidum Tannicum

If massed with mucilage, the pills dry, crack, and crumble to powder. A mixture of glycerin and mucilage of acacia (or dispensing-syrup) makes an excellent excipient.

Aloes

Pills containing aloes in any fair proportion, and particularly when in combination with colocynth, scammony and soap, are best made with decoct, aloes comp., which an eminent pharmacist has called their 'natural excipient.'It has great solvent power, and must be used in very sparing quantity. Aloes, mastic, and soap are best massed with this excipient. Decoct, aloes comp. owes its value as an excipient chiefly to the presence of potassium carbonate, which is an active solvent of organic substances, but not in every case a desirable addition to a pill-mass. Aloes alone, or the extract, in pill, is the better for the addition of some fibrous material, such as about a tenth of its weight of althaea or liquorice: mass with spirit. This helps to keep the shape of the pill.

Aloinum

This active principle is practically aloes free from resin and extractive matters, therefore devoid of the binding-materials which make solvent excipients appropriate for aloes. Glycerin of tragacanth masses aloin well.

Aluminii Chloridum

A very deliquescent salt, which should be massed with lanoline, cut and varnished expeditiously, e.g.:

Ft. pil.

Ammonii Carbonas

Rarely prescribed in pill, but the following is a recent prescription:

This makes a good mass with glycerin.

Ammonii Chloridum

This salt is sometimes prescribed along with quinine sulphate for a neuralgic pill, as in the following:

An aqueous or glycerin excipient is useless owing to the solubility of the ammonium chloride. A good pill is obtained by mixing all the ingredients together with 1 grain of powdered myrrh, and massing with rectified spirit.