bitter pill vs facilitation

bitter pill

noun
  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bitter, pill. 

facilitation

noun
  • The process of synapses becoming more capable of transmitting the same type of signal each time certain types of sensory signals pass through sequences of these synapses. 

  • The act of facilitating or making easy. 

How often have the words bitter pill and facilitation occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )