"Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night"
Dave Barry, humorist
In 1884 William Upjohn (1853-1932), a U.S. doctor from Michigan, invented the first pill that could dissolve in the stomach. Upjohn had the innovative idea of introducing a starter particle into a revolving pan. As the pan turned, the starter was sprayed with powdered medicine, building up the new pill layer by layer. The number of layers controlled the strength of the pill. The resulting "friable" (easily crushable) pill dissolved when ingested. Prior to Upjohn's development, patients had to ingest drugs in liquid form or as pills with hard coatings. The problems were that the dosage of liquids was inconsistent and the pill coatings were so hard that they did not always dissolve, meaning that patients received no benefit.
After patenting his invention in 1886, Upjohn developed a machine to mass-produce his pills. With his brother he set up the Upjohn Pill and Granule Company. The reputation of the friable pill quickly spread, thanks to Upjohn's clever marketing strategy. He sent small pine boards to thousands of doctors, together with samples of his friable pills and his rivals' hard pills, inviting the doctors to crush the pills into the boards to see which one was the most digestible. Early Upjohn products included quinine pills and the first candy laxatives. Over the next century the company manufactured 186 different medications in pill form. The dissolvable pill is still in use today.
