A Manual of Pharmacology

Abstract

PHARMACOLOGICAL literature in the English language has during the last few years increased considerably, and this is true even if we exclude the copious additions to this literature emanating from America. Students of pharmacology at the present time have at least three exhaustive text-books to choose from, all up to date, and written by teachers actively engaged both in teaching and original research. In each of these works the classification of the subject adopted is markedly different, from which, perhaps, the philosophical reader would be apt to infer that in the present state of our knowledge, whether of the action of drugs or of the chemical composition of their active ingredients, no absolute classification is possible. In the book before us prominence is certainly given in determining classification to the physiological action of the drugs in question, and in the present state of our knowledge perhaps a classification based upon such principles is the most satisfactory. The matter is, however, one of. considerable difficulty, as nearly all drugs exert many physiological actions not always differing only in degree, but in some cases actually in kind. It is, from the nature of the case, therefore obligatory to take one action of a drug as determining its position in one or other group. As an instance we may cite caffeine. Dr. Dixon places this drug by virtue of its action in the group of diuretics; if we, however, follow the text we find that considerable space is of necessity devoted to the other, almost equally important, actions of this alkaloid.

A Manual of Pharmacology.

By Dr. W. E. Dixon. Pp. xii + 451; numerous curves, diagrams, and formulæ in the text. (London: Edward Arnold, 1906.) Price 15s. net.