The Great Pharmacologists and Their Revolutionary Discoveries

Abstract

Ever since the subject of pharmacology was liberated from the realms of the other major basic biological sciences including physiology, pathology, and chemistry, the drastic growth in the branch of pharmacology as a medical speciality was very much perceptible. The domain of pharmacology, as an independent speciality, in the last century-and-half, has transformed from the usage of crude plant extracts as drugs to the more synthetically engineered lab-based therapeutics like the application of monoclonal antibodies and gene and stem cell therapies. However, revisiting the conventional modes and sources of drugs are sometimes inevitable – so as to learn from both what had gone wrong or correct. Hence, perusing the history of a subject, which deals with the substances that are involved in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment (sometimes, cure), is all the more important. The efforts put forth by some of the stalwarts in the field of biomedical sciences, who were involved in interdisciplinary research with special inclination towards pharmacology, are worth reviewing. In this chapter, the many doyens in the international arena of pharmacology from Jonathan Pereira (the Founder of British Pharmacognosy) to Louis C. Lasagna (the Father of Clinical Pharmacology) are discoursed with relevance to their contributions in pharmacology; many of whom were Nobel Laureates.