The Importance of Pleasant 
Medication. 
BY 
MUNC2^^B 
Ph. D., M.D., 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
REPRINTED FROM THE 
Neto ¥orft .f&eWcal journal 
for July 14, 1894- Reprinted from the New York Medical Journal 
for July 189J}. 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION/ 
MAGRUDER MUNCASTER, Ph. D., M. D., 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
T trust the society will pardon me for digressing 
from its usual custom of requiring an essay on some patho- 
logical condition or a clinical report of a case. This di- 
gression, however, does not partake of a subject that is 
alien to our researches, but, on the other hand, to one that 
is essentially allied to our best results through means 
which may be defined as " the easiest way is the best." 
During ten years of active practice, all the while ob- 
serving the marked advancement being made in scientific 
medication and taking into consideration the general 
trend for many years past to make the practice of medi- 
cine an exact science, 1 have reached the conclusion, with 
which T doubt not you will agree, that the era for pleasant 
medication is attained, or at least approximately so. 
The ablest authorities have displayed no skepticism as 
to the best methods of obtaining scientific results in the 
employment of drugs. They have drawn their conclusions 
as to the merits of a drug after its active principle has 
* Read before the Medical Society of the District of Columbia. 
Copyright, 1894 by I) Appleton and Company. 2 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
been isolated by the chemist, experimented with by the 
biologist, and tested in pathological conditions by the 
physician. This means for the elimination of the worth- 
less drug and the adoption of that which is efficacious has 
advanced the science of medicine to its well-known high 
standing. 
What the art of medicine was to the ancients, the sci- 
ence of medicine is to the modern world. The former 
was the acceptation of more or less vague idealities, while 
the latter is the application of known results. The present 
age receives with open arms all recognized scientific 
achievements. It welcomes progress, and sends to far and 
near the tried and accepted agents for the alleviation of 
the many ills to which mankind is the unwilling heir and 
frequent subject. 
Solomon, while administering to his people from the 
storehouse of his proverbial wisdom, said that " a merry 
heart doeth good like a medicine." At that time he had 
access to the choicest balms of Gilead, and had offered to 
him nothing except what was good. While not refiecting 
upon the taste of a king, 1 do not believe that the best at 
that period would be accepted by the cultivated tastes of 
the present age. 
No doubt many of us can recall to memory with a 
vividness bordering on actual taste the days when the 
anxious mother, concerned for the health of her child, be- 
fore so bright and ruddy, but now grown pale and puny, 
would be compelled, under the direction of the family 
physician, to lay the child across her lap, and midst its 
kicking, crying, and screaming, and with perhaps the help 
of two assistants, administer that lingering nauseous dose 
of vermifuge made from oil of wormseed. Do you not 
taste it with a shudder even now, and remember it with a 
gag! In those days the ailing child would, if possible, THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
3 
quietly steal away from home and hide when it saw the 
physician coming. The child grows to manhood, and 
there still clings to him the idea that all medicine is dis- 
agreeable. 
As a friend of mine once said : When he was young, 
his mother kept on hand the customary herbs, roots, and 
barks, and made them into a vile and bitter decoction for 
everything in the way of sickness. He didn't mind being 
sick, but it was the fear of taking that bad-tasting medi- 
cine. lie would rather hold on to a bad cold than 
have to hold any more medicine like that which he took in 
those days. All of you remember the old story of the boy 
who was importuned by his nurse to take his medicine, 
under the plea that " it was real nice and tasted so pleas- 
ant." He replied: " If it is so nice, why don't you take 
it yourself ? " 
In consequence of disagreeable medicine, people have 
frequently resorted to other means of alleviation and de 
lays, to their detriment, in preference to seeking the aid of 
a physician. A medicine which is disagreeable, if given to 
a child at this age of enlightenment, except where there is 
imminent danger, would almost seem to amount to the 
" unusual" punishment that is forbidden by our time hon- 
ored Constitution. 
Mothers have been heard saying to their children that 
" if you do thus and so I'll give you a teaspoonful of that 
medicine." Yet when the same child becomes ill that 
mother's heart wells to overflowing with sorrowful tears 
when compelled to add sufferings in the way of a medicine 
that makes the face writhe with disgust. Medicine is a 
corrective rod, and a good one, but it was never intended 
to correct morals. Medicine is Nature's remedy for physi- 
cal ailments, and the physician is the director and instruct- 
or as to when and how and what kind to use. The moth- 4 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
ers, while careful lest they antagonize the will and direction 
of their long-trusted and intimately associated family 
physician, also have some rights. And, pray, who dares 
deny a woman her say ! She should, however, abide by 
her physician's direction as to when and how and what 
kind of medicine should be administered in a particular 
case, yet at the same time, surely, she has a right to pro- 
test against a medicine in a disagreeable form when the 
same kind may be obtained in a palatable form. 
Many of our regular physicians, apparently entirely 
from habit, prescribe medicines regardless of taste, and 
the patient submits. Yet does he submit ? In many 
cases the answer must be No. The patient is ever on 
the alert with all his senses acute for a medicine that will 
cure his ailments and at the same time be pleasant to his 
taste. 
Other schools of medicine are indebted to many of us 
for their patrons. The licentiate of those same schools, 
however, while ostensibly differing with us as to the theorv 
of practice, adopts most willingly our most appetizing and 
palatable medicines, and reaps in a way the credit of his 
boasting. 
Our schools of medicine can not impress too strongly 
upon the minds of their pupils the advisability and neces- 
sity of prescribing medicines that are agreeable to the 
taste of the patient. A fit motto to hang upon the door- 
posts of their practice would be, Prescribe only the medi- 
cines that are safe, quick, and pleasant. First, safe, because 
we are the trustees of the patient's body, and having as- 
sumed the trust, we are in honor and duty bound to do 
nothing that will affect their health or imperil their lives. 
Secondly, quick, because ill-health has as its retinue of 
attendants mental anguish to the patient, inconvenience 
to the man of business, and anxiety and bodily suffer* THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
5 
ing to the household. Thirdly, pleasant, because the 
taste is within quick communication with the mind, and 
the mind is a potent factor in the alleviation of bodily 
ailments. 
It is not less scientific to prescribe pleasant medicine, 
but, on the other hand, rather the application of our high- 
est achievements. We are no longer tied to large doses of 
sulphur and molasses as an alterative, powdered cinchona 
as a febrifuge, scrapings of iron rust as a tonic, oil of 
wormseed as a vermifuge, and other similar drugs. 
The general anatomy of the people has remained the 
same since the memory of man ; their features and manners 
have changed, and but mark a higher degree of cultivation 
and advancement; their throats have not grown smaller, 
as has been said of the present whales as compared with 
the much-disputed one that swallowed Jonah; yet what 
would the people of to-day think if directed to take their 
pilular medicine in a piece of tissue paper to disguise the 
taste ? 
Not to us alone should be taken all the credit, however, 
for this era of scientific and pleasant form of medication. 
The untiring efforts of the analyst and manufacturing 
chemist have, by means of isolation and synthesis, placed 
in our hands medicines essentially active, efficacious, and 
palatable. Where formerly was administered a teaspoonful 
of nauseating medicine we now have as the best for the 
same purpose a minute tablet, compressed pill, pellet, par- 
vule, or a minimum dose of a concentrated liquid. 
The physician in the country is likewise benefited, for 
he finds himself able to carry the essentials of a drug store 
in his overcoat pocket without the slightest inconvenience. 
The necessity of his carrying medicines to patients is far 
more obvious than that of his brother practitioner in the 
city. In the country the patients are more or less far from 6 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
a pharmacy, and the consequent inconvenience and delays 
in obtaining medicines would otherwise be attended with 
serious injury to the patient. That the most scientific and 
pleasant forms of medicine are the most convenient to the 
country practitioner is a fact that not only keeps him 
abreast with the times but also enables him to prescribe 
intelligently and satisfactorily to his patients and to him- 
self. 
Tn the large cities, more especially, there are many 
practitioners who are now using extensively the palatable 
medicines that are prepared in a concentrated form from 
the active principles. Some of these practitioners are 
among the most eminent in the profession, having profes- 
sional incomes from twenty five thousand dollars a year and 
upward, and they make, a point of keeping in their offices 
from fifty to one hundred thousand tablets. 
In our own city there are many of our most success- 
ful practitioners dispensing tablets and other forms of 
concentrated medicines. These same physicians will tell 
you that this system has not only been profitable but also 
gives greater satisfaction to their patients. The progress- 
ive pharmacists of to day keep in stock a complete as- 
sortment of this form of medicaments. Some physi- 
cians hesitate on that account to dispense any medicine. 
This, however, should not influence them, as this repre- 
sents only a part of the medicines commonly used or pre- 
scribed. 
My advice to the young physician, just beginning his 
career, is to keep on hand a well-filled case of tablet trit- 
urates. In so doing, as already intimated, he wifi find it 
not only more profitable, but that it will increase his office 
practice more than any other method known at the present 
time. 
Again, I would have you consult with the patient rela- THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
7 
tive to the form of the medicine that is to be taken. The 
sense of taste varies markedly. To some a bitter medicine 
is agreeable; some will only take sweets in a liquid or 
pilular form; some are unable to swallow a pill or a cap 
sule from not having been taught in their childhood to do 
so; some can take anything and everything in whatever 
form it may be administered; and some veterans, not more 
progressive than their physicians, will take the vilest de- 
coctions of bitter drugs, believing that the nastier the 
medicine the greater its power. In other w7ords, I mean 
that the physician should not only diagnosticate the disease 
of his patient but as well his tastes, wishes, and peculiari- 
ties, whether mental or physical. 
It is useless for me to attempt to show all the ad- 
vantages of such a system to those who have adopted it in 
their practice, but I will simply mention an instance, that 
of a specialist, who informed me that it was about the 
only way he could hold his patients sufficiently long to cure 
them. 
Those who seek the services of a physician nowadays 
and go to a young doctor, which they do sometimes, con- 
sider his habits, manners, general appearance, and most of 
all the character of his medicines-that is, his ability to 
prescribe scientifically and palatably. 
I would not have you infer that it is best to treat solely 
the imaginations of the patients with placebos of saccha- 
rum lactis or with the vapors of aconite, belladonna, bry- 
onia, or depend entirely upon Nature. It is our duty to 
make an accurate diagnosis in every instance, and this is 
possible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred at the pres- 
ent day, and to treat them according to the latest scientific 
principles with agreeable medicines. In the few cases 
where it is necessary to prescribe a medicine that has a 
disagreeable taste, it is not a difficult matter at this stage THE IMPORTANCE OF PLEASANT MEDICATION. 
8 
of our science not only to mask it in a harmless vehicle 
but also to make it pleasant. 
At present we have the means within our power to dis- 
pel all unfavorable impressions in the minds of the young 
and the old, and make the proverb of Solomon the motto 
of the sick and the well to dav. The New York Medical Journal. 
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