Pharmacology

Pharmacology is the science and practice of developing and administering chemicals as agents in the treatment of diseases. Pharmaceuticals are drugs used as to treat disease, yet they are also abused for “recreational” purposes or used for criminal purposes.

The discipline of pharmacology comprises more than just the chemistry of drugs. It also includes the study of how living organisms react to exposure to drugs. The interactions may be anti-pathogenic, therapeutic, or toxic. The later area of study is toxicology, or the study of poisonous effects.

Diseases afflict plants, animals and humans. The use of chemical agents to treat disease is ancient. Folklore among tribal peoples such as the American Indians and traditional medical systems such as those of China and India developed a wide range of pharmaceuticals.

The ancient Greeks, led by Galen, Hippocrates and others, developed medicine in a systematic philosophical manner. Greek medical science was inherited by the Arabs and their converts following the Arabian conquests. Within roughly a century the entire corpus of Greek medical science was translated into Arabic with the aid of Christian and Jewish physicians. To it was added the medical knowledge of the Persians and the physicians of India.

The medical knowledge of the Islamic world was transmitted to the West during and after the Crusades from sources in the Levant and in Spain. Some new medical knowledge began to filter back to Europe during the voyages of sailors in the age of exploration. They also brought back new disease. The herbal remedies and new diseases were a stimulus to research into biology, diseases, and medicinal remedies.

Probably the most important advance was the development of vaccines following Edward Jenner's (1749–1823) discovery that inoculation with cow pox protected against small pox. Virology, the study of viruses, developed in the early 1900s from work done on viruses by Frederick William Twort and Felix d'Herelle. The growing understanding of viruses enabled vaccines to be developed to combat them. With the deadly global influenza pandemic at the end or World War I the need became acute.

The advances in chemistry of the 19th century bore dramatic fruit for the pharmaceutical industry after 1900. The textile industry was the first to undergo industrialization and adoption of the factory system during the Industrial Revolution. Its products had been dyed with natural dyes until modern chemists began the development of modern sulfur dyes. The chemists, many of whom were Germans working with coal, were able to develop new dyes for coloring fabrics. However, it was also noticed that some microbes took the dyes into their systems, often with fatal effects.

The modern pharmaceutical industry has since grown into a global multi-billion dollar giant. Today the competition to develop new drugs is intense and there are strong economic and political motivations to advance new medicines. There have also arisen in the United States, and to a similar degree in other countries, government agencies that regulate the production and distribution of medicines. One obvious reason is drug abuse. Another is to protect the public for charlatans. Quackery abounded in the United States in the 19th century. Numerous “snake oil salesmen” traveled the country selling remedies that were often simple mixtures of alcohol and opium.

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