tailieunhanh - Basic & Clinical Pharmacology

Pharmacology can be defined as the study of substances that interact with living systems through chemical processes, especially by binding to regulatory molecules and activating or inhibiting normal body processes. These substances may be chemicals administered to achieve a beneficial therapeutic effect on some process within the patient or for their toxic effects on regulatory processes in parasites infecting the patient. Such deliberate therapeutic applications may be considered the proper role of medical pharmacology, which is often defined as the science of substances used to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Toxicology is that branch of pharmacology which deals with the undesirable effects of chemicals on living systems,. | Section I. Basic Principles Chapter 1. Introduction Definitions Pharmacology can be defined as the study of substances that interact with living systems through chemical processes especially by binding to regulatory molecules and activating or inhibiting normal body processes. These substances may be chemicals administered to achieve a beneficial therapeutic effect on some process within the patient or for their toxic effects on regulatory processes in parasites infecting the patient. Such deliberate therapeutic applications may be considered the proper role of medical pharmacology which is often defined as the science of substances used to prevent diagnose and treat disease. Toxicology is that branch of pharmacology which deals with the undesirable effects of chemicals on living systems from individual cells to complex ecosystems. History of Pharmacology Prehistoric people undoubtedly recognized the beneficial or toxic effects of many plant and animal materials. The earliest written records from China and from Egypt list remedies of many types including a few still recognized today as useful drugs. Most however were worthless or actually harmful. In the 2500 years or so preceding the modern era there were sporadic attempts to introduce rational methods into medicine but none were successful owing to the dominance of systems of thought that purported to explain all of biology and disease without the need for experimentation and observation. These schools promulgated bizarre notions such as the idea that disease was caused by excesses of bile or blood in the body that wounds could be healed by applying a salve to the weapon that caused the wound and so on. Around the end of the 17th century reliance on observation and experimentation began to replace theorizing in medicine following the example of the physical sciences. As the value of these methods in the study of disease became clear physicians in Great Britain and on the Continent began to apply them to the .