Abstract
THE general scope of this work is indicated by the above title and the subtitle, reading “An Introduction to Pharmacodynamics based on the Study of the Carbon Compounds.” Short general introductions to chemistry and physiology are first given, dealing with such subjects as valency, structural formulas, iso-merism, correlation of chemical and physiological properties, and the relationships between structure and action. Then follow chapters on the main groups of carbon compounds, for example, hydrocarbons, alcohols, purine bodies, and the alkaloids, their methods of preparation and properties, both chemical and physiological. The book contains a fund of information, from which many suggestions as to lines of research may be gathered, and is a genuine attempt to systematise our present knowledge of the chemistry of pharmacology. As such it should prove of great use, more particularly to physiological and pharmaceutical chemists rather than “to the practitioner who is daily brought in contact with the claims of new drugs,” and whose chemical knowledge could hardly be expected to reach the standard required for the assimilation of the information given, however desirable such a state of things might be.
The Chemical Basis of Pharmacology.
By Francis Francis J. M. Fortescue-Brickdale. Pp. xii + 372. (London: E. Arnold, 1908.) Price 14s. net.
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C., A. The Chemical Basis of Pharmacology . Nature 78, 3 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/078003a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/078003a0