History of Pharmacology Flashcards
What word is Pharmacology derived from?
Latin word: Pharmakon
What does Pharmakon mean?
Originally meaning magic charm for treating disease. Now Pharmakon came to mean a remedy or drug.
Define Pharmacopeia
A book containing an official list of medicinal drugs together with articles on their preparation and use.
Who created the first Pharmacopeia?
Pedanius Dioscorides: Greek Army Surgeon - Described 600 medicinal plants as he travelled with the Roman Army.
What was the first Pharmacopeia called?
De Materia Medica
Who is credited for discovering drug receptors?
John Newport Langley:
In 1905 he proposed that the chemical mediators released by nerve stimulation were acting on a “receptive substance” in the tissues (through his experiments on skeletal muscles)
Explain Thomas Elliots Historical Contributions.
THOMAS ELLIOTT
A student of Langley, as the first one to propose the concept of chemical neurotransmission in 1904, when he suggested that adrenalin was secreted by the sympathetic nerves, which then produces the effects of sympathetic stimulation.
Who proposed the Side Chain Theory?
Paul Erlich
Proposed that toxins and nutritive substances bind selectively to what he called “specific receptor molecules”
Who discovered arsphenamine(Salvarsan), the first drug treatment for syphilis and initiated the concept of “chemotherapy”
Paul Erlich
Who was the 1908 Nobel Prize awarded to?
lya I Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich in recognition of their work on immunity
What did Otto Loewi do?
Performed a simple but brilliant experiment where he used two frog hearts and
showed that when the vagus nerve of one heart was stimulated it releases a chemical which
slowed the rate of the first heart which was innervated, as well as the second heart placed next to
it even though its nerve was not stimulated. He called this chemical “vagus-stoff”.
Loewi also showed that stimulation of the sympathetic nerve released a different chemical, that
he called “accelerans-stoff”, which increased the heart rate. By 1930s scientists widely accepted
that autonomic nerves released an acetylcholine-like substance and an epinephrine-like substance
with opposite effects.
SIR HENRY DALE also made important contributions to the chemical theory of synaptic
Who coined the terms “adrenergic” and “cholinergic” to describe the
actions of autonomic and motor nerve fibres?
Sir Henry Dale
Who was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize
Sir Henry Dale and Otto
Loewi
Who discovered insulin? ( 4 scientists)
Frederick Banting, Charles Best, JJR Macleod, JB Collip
Explain how the discovery of insulin was achieved.
Banting hypothesized that the pancreas released a substance that
metabolized glucose. anting and his graduate
student, Charles Best, performed experiments on dogs. They isolated the pancreas and
made the dogs diabetic. They made extracts from pancreas and tried to treat the diabetic
dogs by injecting these extracts. However, their crude extracts did not work. JB Collip, a
biochemist, helped them to make extracts using more refined biochemical techniques and
the extracts started working.
Who won the 1923 Nobel Prize?
Frederick Banting and JJR
Macleod, who in turn gracefully acknowledge the contributions made by Charles Best and JB Collip and shared their prize with them
Who discovered Penicillin?
Sir Alexander fleming.
How was Peniciliin discovered?
Once Fleming left his lab for a two week vacation, without cleaning or covering the staphylococcal culture dishes. When he returned, instead of discarding the dishes, he noticed that a mold had fallen on one of the dishes and strangely enough there was a clear area around it where the culture had not spread. This got him going and he identified the mold as penicillium notatum, a common type that grows on bread. After more experiments, on 14th February 1929 he introduced penicillin obtained from the mold, as the first antibiotic
Who showed Penicillin can be used to cure infections?
Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
Who won the 1945 Nobel Prize?
Sir Alexander Fleming,
Ernst B Chain and Sir Howard Florey
Who discovered the mechanism of Aspirin?
Sir John Vane - discovered how it inhibits prostaglandin synthesis.
Who won the 1982 Novel Prize?
Aspirin People
What did Sir James Black Accomplish?
He developed the concept of “receptor selective drugs”. He followed the method of modelling drugs based on receptor structure. Because of this important concept which led to the discovery of beta blockers and H2 receptor blockers, the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was jointly awarded to Sir James Black, Gertrude B Elion and George H Hitchings
What is the mechanism in which nitrates act?
Nitric oxide is a signaling mediator formed in endothelial
cells, neurons, phagocytes and other cell types from L-arginine
Explain the Robert Furchgott Sandwich Experiment.
Demonstrated the important role of the endothelium through an ingenious “sandwich
experiment” using two aortic strips and called the substance “endothelium derived relaxing
factor’, later identified as nitric oxide by other scientists
