Studies in the History of Modern Pharmacology and Drug Therapy (review)

In our electronic age of databases, search engines, and e-books, it is especially satisfying to read a meticulously researched and masterfully written book containing the most significant articles, in this case, of the distinguished historian of pharmacology, medicine, and science Dr. John Parascandola. This fine anthology draws upon the author’s broad and prolific body of work containing articles that span from 1971 to 2009. Physically, the book is organized into three sections representing the author’s three main research interests: pharmacological science and theory, the history of pharmacology, and drug therapy. Each section of previously published articles is brimming with nuanced insights about the essence of pharmacology and its history, and its profound influence on the development of modern drug therapies.

The first part of the book deals with the science and theory behind pharmacology. This section’s articles trace the development of two theories that still guide modern pharmacology: how a drug’s chemical structure affects its pharmacological activity and the receptor theory of drug action. The articles chronicle research discoveries of the pioneers who developed these seminal theories including Paul Ehrlich, John Newport Langley, Arthur Cushny, Carl Voegtlin, and others. These articles remind us about the remarkable research career of Paul Ehrlich whose early work in studying dyes led to the development of modern chemotherapy and the receptor theory of drug action. Yet, in an especially intriguing article, the author describes the important work of the lesser known Carl Voegtlin of the United States Public Health Service in the 1920s whose experiments provided a deeper and more nuanced understanding of drug receptor theory than Ehrlich’s work did. As the author notes, it is rather curious that Voegtlin is not a better known figure, given the fact that he served as the first director of the National Cancer Institute.

The second section of the book deals with the origin and evolution of pharmacology as a scientific field and its early struggle to gain professional standing and acceptance. The four articles in this section of the book credit the founding of pharmacology to the early nineteenth-century physiological experiments of François Magendie and Claude Bernard. The first academic program to feature pharmacology was founded by Rudolf Buchheim at the University of Dorpat in 1847. Oscar Schmiedeberg who studied under Buchheim moved to Strassburg and established a program there in 1872. Schmiedeberg also cofounded and co-edited the first academic journal about pharmacology.

Schmiedeberg’s program attracted over 120 students from twenty different nations, one of whom was the American, John Jacob Abel. Abel brought his education and passion for pharmacology to the United States and was hired as a pharmacologist by the University of Michigan in 1891. In 1893, Abel was hired by the newly founded Johns Hopkins University Medical School to establish a pharmacology program there. Abel also founded and served as the first president of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) in 1908 and founded this organization’s Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 1909.

Despite pharmacology’s coming of age as a valuable science, it struggled to gain inclusion into medical and pharmacy school curricula. In an article coauthored with John Swann, the authors trace the barriers pharmacology had to overcome to become one of the center pieces of a sound medical or pharmacy education. Pharmacology as a young science had capable advocates including John Jacob Abel, Arthur Cushny, Clement Lowe, Rufus Lyman, and others whose persistence ultimately prevailed, and by the 1960s, pharmacology played a central role in pharmacy education. Ironically, pharmacology first gained acceptance in medical education but initially struggled to do so in pharmacy schools. The author argues that pharmacists were reluctant to replace the traditional course of materia medica with pharmacology because they feared that they would be encroaching on the physician’s domain because of the therapeutics involved in teaching pharmacology. Secondly, many argued that offering...