The pharmacologist studies the physiological or biochemical mechanisms by which drug actions are produced. The pharmacologist also investigates those factors which modify the effects of drugs, i.e. the routes of administration, influence of rates of absorption, differential distribution, and the body's mechanisms of excretion and detoxification, on the total effect of a drug. Pharmacotherapeutics is the study of the use of drugs in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease states. Toxicology is the study of drug effects which are inimical to health. Experimental pharmacology, in the broadest sense, deals with the reactions of living organisms to chemical agents, or, to put the matter in another way, the behavior of organisms to changes in the chemical environment in which they live.
Pharmacology is a part of biology. . . .
Of all the vast number of pharmacologic reactions, those which the physician attempts to use for curative purposes are of the greatest interest and most deserved of study. A medicine or preparation with no inherent pertinent pharmacologic activity which is effective only by virtue of the factor of suggestion attendant upon its administration. A drug preparation incorporated into an experiment with the intention that it have effects on the experimental system qualitatively similar to those expected of the independent variable. A measure of drug activity established by determining the dose of a drug required to produce a standard effect. Potency varies inversely with the magnitude of the dose required to produce a given effect.