An unpleasant person is a "pill" or a "big pill," and an unpleasant turn of events is "a bitter pill to swallow." Oral contraceptives are "the pill" and antidepressants are "happy pills." Someone who takes a lot of drugs is called a "pill popper."

Except for one thing – pills are past tense, history, just one of the obsolete dosage forms that are part of the trivia of the history of medicine. Even the rare holdovers from the glory days of patent medicines, Doan's Pills and Carter's Little Pills (once known as Carter's Little Liver Pills) aren't pills, they're tablets. The word "pill" may still be with us, but the pill – a dosage form made by combining some active drug with an inactive ingredient (soap, bread crumbs, or rose petals were common) that would give it volume, and honey, or later, glycerin (which might be added to keep the pills from getting hard), and rolled into a ball – is gone.

Today, just about all medications are made in factories, and owe more to chemistry and physics than to pharmacognosy. But just about a century ago, the apothecary took what looked like the remains of last month's salad bar, extracted the active principles from the herbs and spices, and somehow converted these into a form that could be swallowed or applied to a human being. And this challenge led to some interesting, though now obsolete, means of delivery.

Consider the cachet, a sort of medicinal ravioli (or pirogi, depending on your ethnic background). The cachet device was a piece of wood with 10 watch-glass depressions. Rice paper was loosely placed on the mold, and the medicine was spooned into the depressions. The paper's edges were moistened, and a second piece of rice paper was sealed on top so that the two papers would stick together. The paper packets got slimy when wet, so they could be swallowed whole – like a raw oyster.

Lamellae are another historic dosage form, particularly for eye disorders. Diseases of the eye were, naturally enough, treated with eye drops, but these had a serious limitation: They didn't last very long. Since it was annoying to keep dropping drops into the eye, lamellae were invented. These were thin disks of gelatin that could be inserted into the eye like a contact lens. Medications were dissolved in the gelatin, which was mixed with glycerin to keep the product flexible. The liquid mixture was dropped onto a piece of glass to form a very thin layer, and after it hardened, could be cut to size, and inserted into the eye.

Bougies were suppositories for nasal or urethral use. They were made by forming a cone (using soft fabric or thread), and dipping the cone into a mixture of wax, gelatin, or cocoa butter, in which medication had been dissolved. In addition to carrying medicines, bougies could be used to dilate the vagina, urethra, or the rectum.

There have always been a variety of preparations designed to be applied to the skin – lotions, creams, ointments, pastes, and plasters – and many of these are still around. Two that have been lost are cataplasms and Spongio-Plinin, both of which were designed to deliver moist heat and medication to the skin. Cataplasms, also called poultices, were made of any sort of soft, pasty mass that could retain hot water. Flaxseed, elm bark, bread and milk, bran, and oatmeal were favored. People who didn't feel like scraping breakfast off their skins could use Spongio-Plinin, which was nothing but bits of sponge glued to a piece of cloth. Unlike a cataplasm, Spongio-Plinin could be reused.

One of the best, and sometimes worst, of the obsolete dosage forms was the confection, which was usually a mixture of dried fruits and honey combined with medicine. The fruit was sweet, which hid the medicinal taste, and usually had enough water to dissolve the medicine. Here's a formula from 1898: "Take 1 ounce of oil of turpentine, 1 ounce of powdered licorice-root, and 2 ounces of clarified honey. Rub first the turpentine and licorice together, and mix in the honey until the whole is uniformly and intimately mixed." It might not sound appealing, but the formula was good for flatulence, round worms, rheumatic complaints, tympanites (distension of the abdomen caused by accumulation of gas), and intestinal bleeding.

Similarly, there was diluting for disguising, which was useful when the treatment required the patient to swallow several grams of a powder that would sicken a goat. The medicinal powder could be dissolved in wine or blackberry cordial, both of which were standard diluents, and taken in dosages of wineglassful (45–60 ml), teacupful (about 150 ml), or tumblerful (about 330 ml).

But most oral medicines were very unpleasant, and the taste was impossible to disguise, and for these, there was only one remaining answer: Label the product a haustus or a draught. These terms were medicalese for "swallow the whole thing so fast that you don't get a chance to taste how awful it is." For the record, the last remaining product to be called a draught is a senna laxative named Black Draught, first marketed in 1840. According to reports, it doesn't taste bad at all.

But language changes just as medications do, and words can lose their meaning – which is why a pill is now a tablet, or sometimes a capsule. As for Black Draught, the syrup is still around, and for those who don't care for the taste, they also market the product in tablet form. At least they stopped short of calling it a pill.