PHARMACOLOGY AND ITS HISTORY

1. Introduction to
Pharmacology
MUSKAAN
4TH SEMESTER
CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY

2. DEFINITION OF
PHARMACOLOGY
Pharmacology is branch of biology that
concerned with study of drug action and the
effects of living organisms with drugs .
Derived from Greek word pharmakon which
means drugs
This subject embodies drug composition and
properties, interactions, toxicology, therapy,
and medicinal uses such as application and
ant pathogenic capabilities.
Pharmacology is subdivided into two
categories :
1. Pharmacodynamics : deals with
chemical interactions with body/cell
receptors
2. Pharmacokinetics : deals with the four
stages of chemicals passing through the
body: absorption,
distribution, metabolism and excretion.

3. More specifically it is study of the interaction
that occur between living organisms and
chemicals that affect normal and abnormal;
biochemical function
Pharmacology is the study of the sources,
uses, and mechanisms of action of drugs. That
is what the body does to drugs
(pharmacokinetics) and what drugs do to the
body (pharmacodynamics)
In contrast Pharmacy is health service
profession concerned with application of
principals learned from pharmacology in its
clinical settings

4. Pharmacology is crucial for:
•discovering new medicines to help
fight diseases
•improving the effectiveness of
medicines
•reducing unwanted side effects of
medicines
•understanding why individuals differ
in the way they respond to certain
drugs, and why some others cause
addiction

5. DIVISION OF
PHARMACOLOGY
1. Pharmacokinetics
2. Pharmacodynamics
3. Therapeutics
4. Chemotherapy
5. Toxicology
6. Clinical Pharmacology
7. Pharmacy
8. Pharmacognesy
9. Pharmacogenetics
10. Pharmacoeconomics
11. Pharmacoepidemiology
12. Comparative Pharmacology
13. Animal Pharmacology
14. Pharmacoeconomics
15. Posology

6. Therapeutics: The branch of pharmacology that deals with
the art and science of treatment of disease. It is the
application of pharmacological information together with the
knowledge of disease, for the prevention and cure of the
disease.
Toxicology: branch of pharmacology which includes the
study of adverse effects of drugs on the body. It deals with
the symptoms, mechanisms, treatment and detection of
poisoning caused by different chemical substances.
The main criterion is the dose. Essential medicines are
poisons in high doses and some poisons are essential
medicines in low doses

7. Clinical Pharmacology: Clinical pharmacology is the
scientific study of drugs in man. It includes pharmacokinetic
and pharmacodynamic investigations in healthy or diseased
individuals. It also includes the comparison with
placebos, drugs in the market and surveillance
programmers.
Posology: Posology deals with the dosage of drugs.
Example includes paracetamol given as one tablet of
500mg thrice a day.
Neuropharmacology : study of effect of drug on central
and pheripheral nervous system
Pharmacogenetics: Branch of pharmacology dealing with
the genetic variations that cause difference in drug
response among individuals or population
Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy refers to the treatment of
diseases by chemicals that kill the cells, specially those of
microorganisms and euplastic cells.

8. Pharamcogenomics: Pharmacogenomics is the broader
application of genomic technologies to new drug discovery and
further characterization of older drugs.
Pharmacoepidemiology: Pharmacoepidemiology deals with
the effects of drugs on a large population. The effects may be
good or harmful.
Pharmacognosy: Pharmacognosy is the identification
of drugs by just seeing or smelling them. It is a crude method
no longer used. Basically it deals with the drugs in crude or
unprepared form and study of properties of drugs form natural
sources or identification of new drugs obtained from natural
sources.
Comparative Pharmacology: Branch of pharmacology
dealing with the comparison of one drug to another belonging
to the same or another group

9. History of Pharmacology
Pharmacology emerged as its own discipline in the 19th
Century, branching off from research done in fields of science
such as organic chemistry and physiology.
Oswald Schmiedeberg
who was born in what is now Latvia in 1838, is considered the
father of pharmacology. His doctoral thesis was on the
measurement of chloroform levels in blood, and he went on to
become a professor of pharmacology at the University of
Strasburg, where he ran an institute of pharmacology. There, he
studied chloroform, which was used as an anesthetic, chloral
hydrate, a sedative and hypnotic, and muscarine, a compound
isolated from the mushroom Amanita muscaria that stimulates
the parasympathetic nervous system and has been used to
treat various diseases such as glaucoma.

10. In 1890, John Jacob Abel became the first
pharmacology chair in the United States, at the
University of Michigan. He later went to Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. Abel was the first to isolate
the hormone epinephrine from the adrenal gland, isolate
histamine from the pituitary gland , and make pure
crystalline insulin.
Animals such as dogs, cats, pigeons, and frogs were
used to test pharmacological substances.
Humans were even used as test subjects.
Sometimes they suffered through severe adverse effects
from these substances, such as when the German
pharmacist Friedrich Serturner and three of his friends
had poisoning for several days from an alkaloid that
Serturner had isolated from opium. This alkaloid was
later named morphine, after the Ancient Greek god of
sleep, Morpheus

11. Rudolf Buchheim : was a German pharmacologist born
in Bautzen.
In 1845 he earned his doctorate from the University of
Leipzig and shortly after became an associate professor of
pharmacology, dietetics. history of medicine and medical
literature at the University of Dorpat.
In 1849 he was chosen as a full professor of pharmacology.
While at Dorpat he created the first pharmacological institute at
that school.
In 1867 he became professor of pharmacology
and toxicology at the University of Giessen.

12. Early , Pharmacologist focused on natural substances mainly plants
extract .
Pharmacology developed in 19th century as a biomedical science
that applied principals of scientific experimentation to therapeutical
contexts
Today Pharmacologists use genetics , molecular biology ,
biochemistry and other advanced tools to transform information
about molecular mechanisms and targets into therapies directed
against diseases , defects or pathogens and creates method for
preventive care , diagnostic and ultimately personalized medicines