ABSTRACT
The modern pharmaceutical industry can trace its beginnings to two sources local apothecaries—called chemists in the United Kingdom and pharmacists in the United States—that expanded from their traditional role distributing botanical drugs such as morphine and quinine to wholesale manufacture in the mid-1800s. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is divided into two major stages: the production of the active ingredient or medicine and secondary processing, the conversion of the active medicines into products suitable for administration. Most pharmaceuticals are complex organic compounds which have their basis in smaller, simpler precursor organic molecules that are petroleum byproducts. The pharmaceutical industry includes the manufacture, extraction, processing, purification, and packaging of chemical materials to be used as medications for humans or animals. In the pharmaceutical industry, a wide range of excipients may be blended together to create the final blend used to manufacture the solid dosage form.
