Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1870 — Will Pills Explode? [ARTICLE]

Will Pills Explode?

It is really terrible to find out every day some new danger to which we are exposed. If there is one thing which people have hitherto confided in, it is a pill box; it is allowed to lie about anywhere, it is shut up in a drawer or a cupboard, or is carried in the pocket, A general panic will therefore be caused in many a household by the account given in the Pharmaceutical Journal of what recently befell a lady for whom a doctor had prescribed twentyfour pills, each containing two grains of the oxide of silver, a twenty-fourth of a grain of muriate of morphia, and a sufficiency of textract of gentian, the pills being coated with silver in the usual-man-ner. The pills, it is stated, were delivered to the patient in an ordinary pill box; but the lady, being in her nursery, and having no pocket m her dress, placed the box in her bosom, probably next the skin. Little did this unfortunate lady know the deadly peril which awaited her. In three quarters of an hour a severe explosion occurred; her underclothes were reduced to a tinder, she was seriously burned, and, but that she had the presence of mind to extinguish the flame with her hands, she would have been destroyed. Oxide of silver, being reduced by contact with vegetable extracts, is, it seems, in the habit of exploding. It is really as'well people should be made aware of the danger they run, in order that they may have magazines for pill boxes attached to their dwellings. We should also be glad to know if pills of this nature are liable to explode after being swallowed. No information is given on this point, which is of some little importance; but the Lancet, for our consolation, under the head of “ Tilings not Generally Known,” says that a similar occurrence has been known in compounding the extract of colocynth with the oxide of silver, and that with creosote of oil of cloves this salt is reduced to the metallic state with the production of heat, amounting often to an explosion. In fact, there are some pills which are nothing more or less than infernal machines, and people with volcanic temperaments and undermined constitutions, for whom they are prescribed, should be careful to take them In secluded spots, where no one but themselves can be injured in the event of an explosion. —Scientific American.