Note 374 — PHARMACOLOGIA.

The Everlasting Pill of the ancients consisted of metallic Antimony, which being slightly soluble in the gastric juice was supposed to exert the property of purging as often as it was swallowed. This was economy in right earnest, for a single pill would serve a whole family during their lives, and might be transmitted as an heir-loom to their posterity. We have heard of a Lady who having swallowed one of these pills, became seriously alarmed at its not passing; upon sending however for her physician, he consoled her with the assurance that it had already passed through a hundred patients with the best effect.