Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

2. Laws and Regulations.
a. Prevention of adulteration
b. Restrictions on those who prescribe and the pharmacists/apothecaries who
produce the medication
c. Controlling the safety of drugs
3. Medical advances which have defined the mechanism of adverse events
a. Introduction of diagnostic techniques
b. First introduction of diagnostic instruments
4. Diseases.
a. Life-threatening diseases without effective treatments where there were few
benefits to offset the adverse effects of the medication, e.g. syphilis
b. Transient ailments where ineffective drugs did not influence the outcome,
but relieved symptoms
5. Pharmacological advances
a. Investigation of the effect of medicines
b. Isolation of active principles
c. Introduction of synthetic chemicals
6. Toxicology, which defined the severe type ‘A’ reactions.
a. Accidental poisonings
b. Deliberate poisonings.
Chapter 1. Pre-biblical period
One can only conjecture that animals and primitive man could distinguish, by trial
and error, between plants and berries that were edible and those that were
poisonous, and by an extension of this that they knew that some were beneficial
when they were ill and that whether the plant or berry was beneficial or produced
adverse effects depended on the amount they took. Some modern research
supports this hypothesis.
An African chimpanzee that was ill because of a parasitic intestinal infection with
the nematode worm, Oesophagostomum stephanostomum, chewed the pith of
Vernonia amygdalina, with recovery in 24 hours. The pith of V. amygdalina was
found to contain vernonioside B1 and vernoniol B1, which had antiparasitic activity.
Chimpanzees avoid the leaves, which contain the highly toxic compound vernodalin
(Huffman, 2001). For several African ethnic groups, a concoction made from V.
amygdalina is used for treating for malarial fever, schistosomiasis, amoebic
dysentery, several other intestinal parasites and stomach aches (Huffman, 2001). In
two cases, recorded in detail, recovery from such symptoms was evident 20-24
hours after the individuals chewed the bitter pith. In one of these cases, the eggs per