suppository
A suppository is a small, bullet-shaped solid dose of medicine that you insert into the rectum (or, as a pessary, the vagina), where body warmth turns it from a firm solid into a releasing medicine. It is a way to give a drug without swallowing it — useful when a patient is vomiting, unconscious, or cannot take anything by mouth.
Formally, a suppository is a solid dosage form designed to be inserted into a body cavity, where it either melts at body temperature or dissolves in the local fluids to release its drug. The base is chosen to control this: fatty bases such as cocoa butter or synthetic hard fat melt at body heat, while water-soluble bases such as glycerinated gelatin or polyethylene glycol dissolve in the cavity's moisture instead.
Suppositories serve two purposes: local action (such as treating haemorrhoids or constipation) and systemic delivery, where the drug is absorbed through the rectal mucosa into the bloodstream. A genuine advantage is that drugs absorbed from the lower rectum partly bypass first-pass liver metabolism. The drawbacks are practical: variable and sometimes incomplete absorption, patient reluctance, and bases that can soften or melt in hot storage.
A paracetamol suppository made in a hard-fat base melts at body temperature to control a child's fever when vomiting makes the oral route impossible.
Body heat melts a solid dose into a medicine that is absorbed without swallowing.
Drug absorbed from the lower rectum partly bypasses the liver's first-pass metabolism, which can make a rectal dose more effective than the same oral dose for some drugs.