Abstract
THE use of substances in the treatment of disease has, probably in a majority of cases, been empirical for some time after their discovery and adoption; in fact, in spite of recent advances in chemistry, through which the actual structure of many drugs has been elucidated, pharmacology is in many instances only able to describe the actions of drugs on living tissues without at present finding it possible to give the actual reasons for these actions. The problem is part of the wider one of the relation between chemical structure and physiological action. In those cases where the chemical structure is known, it is easy to investigate the action of known quantities of the drug upon a number of organisms of the same or different species and thus arrive at the minimum dose which is effective, and at the maximum dose which is safe, for no drug' is absolutely harmless when the dose has exceeded a certain specific limit. But when a substance cannot be isolated in a pure state and its chemical structure is unknown, as is the case for example with the active principles obtained by extracting certain glandular organs, the sole indication of their presence being the effects they produce upon living tissues, it is essential, to get comparable results with different samples and to protect the patient against a possible overdose, to have an approximate idea of the strength of the sample in terms of its physiological action. It is a common experience to find that extracts prepared in the same manner and containing a known amount by weight of the original organ, may yet differ enormously in physiological activity. This variability is due to variations in the condition of the gland before extraction and to varying loss of the active principle during this process.
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Physiological Standardisation. Nature 115, 353–354 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115353a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115353a0