Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine

DRUGS
The area of health care concerned with drugs and medicinal therapies is pharmacology. Health-care professionals who
dispense prescription drugs are pharmacists, who may be registered pharmacists (RPh) or doctors of pharmacy
(PharmD).
This section, “Drugs,” presents an overview discussion
of pharmacologic concepts and entries
about drugs and their use for the maintenance of
health and the treatment of infection, injury, and
disease.
Pharmaceutical Traditions in Medical History
The earliest written medical documents reference
often elaborate preparations of botanicals used as
medicines to treat a broad spectrum of ailments,
ranging from HEADACHE and itching to weak PULSE
and infected wounds. Healers in the times of
ancient Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
China relied on extensive collections of herbs,
roots, barks, and seeds from which they concocted
tinctures, teas, poultices, and other remedies.
Ancient pharmacopeias outlined the formulations
and uses of hundreds of plant forms for medicinal
purposes.
ALCOHOL, too, was a major weapon in the early
physician’s pharmaceutical arsenal, serving as a
topical antibacterial as well as an ingested analgesic
(PAIN reliever) and quasi-anesthetic. Opium
poppies and coca leaves yielded the first
NARCOTICS, opium and COCAINE. Coffee beans and
tea leaves yielded CAFFEINE, a potent stimulant.
Tobacco leaves, chewed or smoked, were the
source of another powerful stimulant, NICOTINE.
Coca leaves and tobacco leaves acquired such high
value in some early cultures that they served as
currency.
Today medicinal herbs and botanicals remain
the mainstay of TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM)
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and form the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical
industry. As many as 5,000 medicinal
plants grow in various regions around the world,
many in the rain forests of South America. About
25 percent of modern medicines trace their derivations
directly or indirectly to plants. Laboratories
now produce synthetic forms of many drugs
once extracted from plants, such as the antiarrhythmia
DRUG digoxin (digitalis from the foxglove
plant), the pain reliever aspirin (salicin from the
bark of the willow tree), and the antimalarial drug
quinine (quinaquina from the bark of the chinchona
tree). Other drugs, such as the anticancer
drug paclitaxel (Taxol), which is an extract from
the bark of the Pacific yew tree, still derive from
their botanical sources.
Drug Controls and Regulations
The regulation of drugs—from effectiveness and
safety to production and availability—that is the
foundation of today’s pharmaceutical industry is a
modern phenomenon. Until the early 20th century
narcotics such as opium and HEROIN were
freely available in the United States. Patent medicines
(an odd assortment of liniments, elixirs,
tinctures, nostrums, bitters, extracts, and compounds)
dominated the druggist’s apothecary.
From Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound,
which contained far more alcohol than vegetable,
to Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a sedating
preparation of morphine, patent medicines
claimed to treat just about any ailment . . . and
many claimed to treat just about every ailment.