Pharmacology in medicine. 1, The impact of pharmacology on medicine / by W.D.M. Paton.

  • Paton, William D. M.
Date:
[1956]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pharmacology in medicine. 1, The impact of pharmacology on medicine / by W.D.M. Paton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    15 PHARMACOLOGY IN MEDICINE 1. THE IMPACT OF PHARMACOLOGY 2. THE EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH ON MEDICINE TO PHARMACOLOGY Professor W. D. M. Paton John R. Vane 3. THE TEACHING OF PHARMACOLOGY IN MEDICINE J. W. Thompson THE IMPACT OF PHARMACOLOGY ON MEDICINE By W. D. M. PATON, D.M., F.R.S. Professor of Pharmacology, Royal College of Surgeons of England In the last fifty years pharmacology and chemo¬ therapy have produced a transformation in medical practice as great as that achieved by the discovery of anaesthesia or of the bacterial origin of disease. Before 1900 the specific remedies at the general practitioner’s disposal did not greatly exceed the handful of classical drugs handed down to us NEW MAJOR REMEDIES PER IO YEARS from distant generations, such as purgatives, opium, foxglove, ipecacuanha, belladonna, mer¬ cury and iodides. There were some preliminary inklings of the treatment of nutritional defect, foreshadowed by observations such as those of the naval surgeon James Lind on the value of lemons in scurvy. These observations, however, were not so well founded as to be incorporated fully into practice. But since that period there has been a steady and accelerating accumulation of therapeutic agents, so that now one must assume that each year there will be discovered several new drugs, with new properties, allowing a new approach to a particular disease or diseases. It is difficult to assess in any quantitative way how such progress is likely to continue. But it needs only the consideration of the attached table (Table 1), and the figure based on it (Fig. 1), to make one suspect that the discovery of new specific remedies is to some extent a self-generating pro¬ cess. As a new line of inves¬ tigation is opened up, it paves the way in turn for yet other approaches, rather than lead¬ ing to exploration, completion and then abandonment of a particular avenue. This growth has come about by the steady develop¬ ment of the experimental method, chiefly in the sciences of chemistry, biochemistry, physiology and pathology, all assisting and stimulating one another. An important factor, too, has been a development of statistical method and the allowing the worth of a remedy in clinical practice to be discovered with greater precision and speed than in the past. A further major element has been the growth of the pharmaceutical industry, who have shouldered the great task of developing screening programmes from which emerge those drugs best suited for clinical practice. Between the “ academic ” depart¬ ments and those in industry can be seen growing Graph of the increasing rate of discovery of new major remedies, with lapse of time