Medicine initially mislaid, suffering (3)
I believe the answer is:
ill
'suffering' is the definition.
'medicine initially mislaid' is the wordplay.
'medicine' becomes 'pill' (pill is a kind of medicine).
'initially mislaid' means to remove the first letter.
'pill' with its first letter removed is 'ILL'.
(Other definitions for ill that I've seen before include "Shakespeare: '. . . met by moonlight'" , "Harmful" , "Not in good health" , "Dicky" , "Where Chicagoans are briefly" .)