| View Larger Image | Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth-Century (Clio Medica/The Wellcome Institute Series in the History ... Institute Series in the History of Medicine) | Paperbackby Andreas-Holger Maehle (Author)
| List Price: | $49.50 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 5 to 7 weeks |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Rodopi Bv Editions | | Page Count: | 376 Pages | | Publication Date: | January 01, 1999 | | Sales Rank: | 1,713,601st |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Experimental pharmacology is often portrayed as a creation of the nineteenth century, the age of the sciences in medicine. This book demonstrates that the basic methodology of the field, including chemical analysis, in vitro testing, animal experimentation and human research, was already developed in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Putting remedies "on trial" was stimulated by the challenge to Galenism through new chemical, mechanical and vitalist concepts of disease, by the import of exotic drugs and the flourishing trade with secret medicines. The book describes the main issues of eighteenth-century pharmacology and therapeutics and provides detailed case studies of three key areas: lithontriptics (remedies against urinary stones), opium, and Peruvian bark (quinine). It shows how pharmacological knowledge and therapeutic change were promoted in medical centres of the time, such as Edinburgh, London, Paris, Halle and GÖttingen. Yet it also reveals how by publication of medical case histories many otherwise little-known practitioners contributed to this scientific enterprise as well. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 2 reviews)
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Drugs on Trial by Ski Racer (UK)  5 Stars
April 13, 2009
Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth-Century (Clio Medica/The Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine 53) (Clio Medica)
Superbly well researched, this book is now the most authoratative text on this subject. Quoted extensively, it is now accepted as the bible of this area of research.
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Drugs on Trial--the verdict  4 Stars
August 11, 2000
Drugs on Trial is an excellent but highly specialized account of pharmaceutical experimentation in the eighteenth century. Through extensive case analyses of three specific topics, Maehle demonstrates that eighteenth-century physicians and scientists not only produced a very large number of case reports but also carried on a large number of pharmaceutical experiments of different sorts. Tests were conducted "in vitro," on animals, and in some cases on human subjects. Maehle shows that this experimentation "did contribute considerably to the theoretical understanding of drugs." The book includes some discussion of the methodological and ethical issues these experiments raised. The three topics discussed in detail are: medicines to dissolve urinary stones (lithontriptics), Peruvian bark (cinchona, which contains quinine) and opium. For those (few) readers who have reason to be seriously interested in the topic, this monograph offers a readable, clearly written, thoroughly researched and reliable guide to a subject that has not previously been adequately investigated.
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