PHAR 300 Midterm: PHAR 300 Pre-Midterm (lecture 1~13) notes.docx

• School: McGill University
• Department: Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Course: PHAR 300
• Professor: Edith Zorychta

Document Summary

Lecture 1 (september 1, 2011): pharmacology throughout history. Basic science: people investigate how drugs act, what they do, and try to discover new drugs. Branch of medicine: clinical pharmacologists specialize in testing drugs and evaluating them in people. How do we define a drug: broad definition: a drug is any chemical that will alter normal functioning of a living system, we will be talking about drugs at different levels. The prof. will often show chemical structure of drugs: the example shows histamine, a normal constituent of human body. First, for example, we will be looking at how drugs act on bones, and how they act on individual cell (ex. Then we go to see what drugs do at more specific locations in and/or surface of the cell (i. e. receptors) Why study pharmacology: one of many reasons is for everyday life.