Product Description

"Pharmacology" is now established as a worldwide best-selling and highly acclaimed textbook for medical and science students. In this fifth edition, as in the previous four, the approach has been not just to describe what drugs do but to emphasise the mechanisms by which they act - where possible at the cellular and molecular level. Therapeutic agents have a high rate of obsolescence and new ones appear each year. An appreciation of the mechanisms of action of the class of drugs to which a new agent belongs provides a good starting point for understanding and using the new compound intelligently. Pharmacology is a lively scientific discipline in its own right, with an importance beyond that of providing a basis for the use of drugs in therapy. The book therefore, where appropriate, includes brief coverage of the use of drugs as probes for elucidating cellular and physiological functions, even when the compounds have no clinical uses. The fifth edition retains the short summaries of relevant physiological and biochemical processes placed at the beginning of most chapters to form a basis for the subsequent discussion of pharmacological actions. As before, short sets of key points are placed in boxes throughout the text. These are not intended as comprehensive summaries but rather to highlight pharmacological information that the authors consider important. Factual knowledge in "pharmacology" is so extensive and expanding so rapidly that students can easily find the information load daunting, and these key points are intended to make it easier for students to gets to grips with the essentials of the subject. As in the previous edition, the therapeutic use of drugs has been given prominence by setting it out in easily identified 'clinical boxes'. For the Fifth Edition, the book is presented in full colour with a new page format and design. Most diagrams have been updated and all have been redrawn in colour, while many new figures have been added. Continuing the approach used in earlier editions the illustrations, wherever feasible, use real data rather than notional information. As previously, the emphasis is placed on the chemical structures of drugs for where this information helps in understanding how the drugs act. All chapters have been updated and an 'Overview' section has been introduced at the beginning of each to help the reader get a flying start on that topic. In including new material, the book takes into account not only new agents but also recent extensions of basic knowledge which presage further drug development, and, where possible, gives a brief outline of new treatments in the pipeline. New 'small print' sections have been included in many chapters. These contain more detailed, sometimes speculative, material, which can be skipped by the reader in a hurry without losing the main thread, but will be of interest to readers wishing to go into greater depth. As before, the book includes fairly extensive sections on 'References and further reading' at the end of each chapter. Because the medical curriculum stresses project work and the preparation of special study modules, references have been annotated to emphasize the main aspects of their coverage and so make the Reference section easier for students to use.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179957 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

Review
This is yet another classic book that has become a favourite with medical students across the UK. "Rang et al" provides such a solid basis for first and second year Pharmacology, that you are in some of the safest hands. With marvellous diagrams and "cramming" blue summary boxes, the layout is well thought out and very useful. This book is one of the best you will find. It's especially perfect for during revision.
"Edinburgh Medics, a Res Medica supplement courtesy of the Royal Medical Society, July 2005"

British Journal of Hospital Medicine
"Rang & Dale are now due more praise for their new improved version of Pharmacology. As before the writing is excellent and surely undergraduates can master a subject when it is explained so lucidly and with evident enthusiasm. As a comprehensive textbook for pharmacy or pharmacology students it has few rivals. As a guide to help continuing education in modern pharmacology it should be both useful and enjoyable."

About the Author
HP Rang Professor HP Rang obtained his first degree in Physiology at University College London, and went on to graduate in Medicine before moving to the Department of Pharmacology in Oxford. There he gained a DPhil, and was appointed to a University Lectureship in Pharmacology and a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford. He became Professor and Head of Department at St George's Hospital Medical School and later at University College London, and he was Director of the Novartis (formerly Sandoz) Institute for Medical Research, based at University College. Professor Rang was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980. Since retiring in 1999, he has worked as a consultant to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He has published many research papers, mainly in the fields of receptor pharmacology and neuroscience.

With Dr Maureen Dale he wrote the first edition of Pharmacology (1987), and Professor Jim Ritter became a co-author for the third and subsequent editions. He is currently preparing a new book on Drug Discovery, to be published by Harcourt.

MM Dale Dr Dale is Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Oxford. Having graduated in Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, she worked as a medical officer at a Health Centre for several years before joining the staff of medical school of the University of Natal. There she was responsible for establishing ab initio, the first course in experimental/clinical pharmacology in South Africa. Finding herself in profound disagreement with the 'apartheid' government in South Africa, she emigrated to the UK where she joined the Department of Pharmacology of University College London. There she gained a PhD in pharmacology and was, for many years, responsible for running the pharmacology course for medical students and the immunopharmacology course for final year science students.

Dr Dale has been an editor of the British Journal of Pharmacology. Before retiring from UCL in 1991, her research areas were the immunopharmacology of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

JM Ritter

Professor Jim Ritter is Head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Guy's King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine (King's College, London, UK). His first degree was in Animal Physiology and he obtained a D Phil in Pharmacology before completing clinical medicine at the Radcliffe Infirmary (Oxford). His basic medical training was in Oxford, London and the Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, USA), where he was chief resident for two years. Subsequent specialist training in clinical pharmacology was at Hammersmith Hospital (London). He is an honorary consultant physician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust where he shares in the acute general medical take, and sees outpatients in the hypertension and vascular disease prevention clinics. His research is in human vascular pharmacology, especially of endothelium-derived mediators. He sat on the sub-committee on safety and efficacy of CSM, has chaired local and multicentre research ethics committees, and currently chairs the Thames Specialty Training Committee in Clinical Pharmacology. He is one of the two editors of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Customer Reviews

A fine, user-friendly and interesting guide to pharmacology
Having tried numerous other texts on pharmacology, I was taken aback by the ease of reading yet thorough approach nature of this text. The book includes a good amount of pathophysiology before discussion of the pharmacology. This means that one can understand the pharmacokinetics and dynamics so much more readily. The illustrations are optimal, the prose and sentence structure is clearly designed so that the reader can learn straightforwardly rather than translating needless jargon and poor prose. The System approach is excellent too. I would have liked a hardcover though. If you are serious about learning pharmacology, this book will travel with you everywhere and ergo receive a significant amount of wear and tear. Nevermind, they are working on the next edition as I type.

A must-have for medics...
This textbook covers everything anyone could ever need - it goes into plenty of detail, explains things clearly and simply, and has a separate section for drugs used in neuroscience. I found it fantastic for both first and second year medicine, and couldn't have done without it for timed essays and tutorials. A sound investment which i will definitely be using during the third year.

Excellent, but perhaps too detailed in places
As a pharmacology student I would highly recommend this book. In places it is perhaps too detailed, but as long as you can judge what you need it is an excellent book. Very informative and arranged well into topics. To maximise benefit from it I would recommend also buying a basic textbook to get a general idea of the topic before going into the depth this book does (perhaps Basic Pharmacology at a Glance, M.Neal).