Rang & Dale's pharmacology

Abstract

In this (8th) edition, as in its predecessors, the authors set out not just to describe what drugs do but also to emphasise the mechanisms by which they act. This entails analysis not only at the cellular and molecular level, where knowledge and techniques are advancing rapidly, but also at the level of physiological mechanisms and pathological disturbances. Pharmacology has its roots in therapeutics, where the aim is to ameliorate the effects of disease, so the authors have attempted to make the link between effects at the molecular and cellular level and the range of beneficial and adverse effects that humans experience when drugs are used for therapeutic or other reasons. Drug action can be understood only in the context of what else is happening in the body. So at the beginning of most chapters, the authors briefly discuss the physiological and biochemical processes relevant to the action of the drugs described in that chapter. In this 8th edition a new chapter 27 on the pharmacology of the skin has been added along with revision of other few chapters