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Pharmacology:
Pharmacology:
(Gr. Pharmakon - drug, and Logos - word) is the study of drugs in all their aspects. Pharmacy, although often confused with pharmacology, is, in fact, an independent discipline concerned with the art and science of the preparation, compounding, and dispensing of drugs. Pharmacognosy is a branch of pharmacy that deals with the identification and analysis of the plant and animal tissues from which drugs may be extracted. Pharmacodynamics, which in common usage is usually termed "pharmacology", is concerned with the study of drug effects and how they are produced. The pharmacodynamicist, or pharmacologist, identifies the effects produced by drugs, and determines the sites and mechanisms of their action in the body. The pharmacologist studies the physiological or biochemical mechanisms by which drug actions are produced. The pharmacologist also investigates those factors that modify the effects of drugs, i.e. the routes of administration, influence of rates of absorption, differential distribution, and the body's mechanisms of excretion and detoxification, on the total effect of a drug. Pharmacotherapeutics is the study of the use of drugs in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease states. Toxicology is the study of drug effects that are inimical to health. The toxicologist may investigate such diverse problems as the effects of overdoses of pharmacotherapeutic agents; the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of lead poisoning in the paint manufacturing industry; the possibility that criminal poisoning was the cause of an otherwise inexplicable death, etc.
"Experimental pharmacology, in the broadest sense, deals with the reactions of living organisms to chemical agents, or, to put the matter in another way, the behavior of organisms to changes in the chemical environment in which they live. Pharmacology is a part of biology... Of all the vast number of pharmacologic reactions, those that the physician attempts to use for curative purposes are of the greatest interest and most deserved of study. This part of pharmacology, the scientific knowledge of remedial agents, forms the theoretical foundation for therapeutics..." H.H.Meter and R. Gottlieb, Experimental Pharmacology as a Basis for Therapeutics: A Textbook for Students and Physicians, 1910 (trans. by V. E. Henderson).
Cf. Therapeutics, Pharmacodynamics, Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacogenetics, Toxicology
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