The Osler Lecture 2012 'Pharmacology 2.0, medicines, drugs and human enhancement'

Abstract

The use of plant extracts, mineral or animal preparations to treat disease is indeed as old as mankind and is a feature common to all cultures. Our understanding of the effect of these substances, and how best to deploy them developed slowly over the centuries and while traditionally closely allied to the practice of medicine, it gradually acquired a distinct individuality and eventually crystallized as the science of pharmacology. By the mid-20th century pharmacology had ceased to be, as someone once said, a ‘handmaiden to therapeutics’, and became firmly established as a separate discipline with its own action agenda and set of questions.