Tablet (pharmacy)

A tablet (also known as a pill) is a drug in solid form taken by mouth .They have active substances and excipients, usually in powder form, that are pressed into a solid. Excipients are not drugs. They are added to make the tablet easier to make or to swallow. The main advantages of tablets are to make sure the person gets the right amount of medicine that is easy to consume.

Tablets are prepared either by moulding or by compression. They used to all be disk shaped, but now they are made in many shapes and colours to help people tell the difference between different medicines. Tablets are often marked with symbols, letters, and numbers. Some have a groove to allow splitting by hand. Sizes of tablets to be swallowed range from a few millimetres to about a centimetre.

The first pills known were found on papyruses in ancient Egypt around 1500 BC. They were made of bread dough, honey or grease mixed with plant powders or spices. Before that medicine was mostly in liquid form. Tablets can be hard to swallow, so they were sometimes coated with sugar or gelatin. Some tablets are really capsules. They can be made in many different shapes.