In use, it is swallowed and allowed to pass through the body, after which it is customarily recovered for reuse, giving rise to the name everlasting pill.
[1][2] According to the Medico-Pharmaceutical Critic and Guide (1907), edited by William J. Robinson: We have referred in the past to the economy which used to be practiced by our fore-fathers.
But we believe that the everlasting cathartic pill beats everything in the line of economy.
This pill was a little bullet composed of metallic antimony which had or was believed to have the property of purging as often as it was swallowed.
A. Paris says, was economy in right earnest, for a single pill would serve a whole family during their lives and might be transmitted as an heirloom to posterity.