Medical Pharmacology: Principles and Concepts

Abstract

A generation of medical students owes its survival to Andres Goth. Now in its 20th year and tenth edition, Goth's Medical Pharmacology has rendered intelligible and tolerable the often alien and all too quantitative discipline of pharmacology, firmly sealing its link with clinical medicine. Over the years Goth has retained this flavor and, with it, an immense popularity. Yet Goth has changed substantially with the times, keeping up in the past two decades with the almost complete turnover of pharmacology, from a descriptive, observational science into a staggering technocracy of molecular biology, receptor theory, pharmacodynamic quantitation, and pharmacokinetic modeling. After two topical sections dealing with general aspects of pharmacology and drug effects of neurotransmitters, the next seven are organsystem- and disease-oriented in the classic sense. Three newer topics appearing in recent editions include immunopharmacology, drug interactions, and poisons-antidotes. Another relatively new feature consists of reference appendices on blood concentrations of