The 2002 Edelstein Award address: To bond or not to bond: Chemical versus physical theories of drug action

Parascandola, John

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127557 Copy

Description

Title

The 2002 Edelstein Award address: To bond or not to bond: Chemical versus physical theories of drug action

Author(s)

Parascandola, John

Issue Date

2003-03-15

Keyword(s)

• History
• Chemistry
• Pharmacy

Abstract

As the sciences of chem. and pharmacol. advanced in the nineteenth century, scientists began to speculate about and investigate the interaction between drugs and the organism at a cellular level. By the early twentieth century, there was considerable controversy over whether drugs exerted their effects on cells largely through their chem. or phys. properties. Developments in org. chem. had made possible the beginnings of an investigation of the relationship between the structure of drugs and their pharmacol. action. These studies, combined with the receptor theory developed by Paul Ehrlich and John Newport Langley in the early years of the twentieth century, lent support to those who argued that drugs act by chem. combining with constituents in the cell. Those who were more influenced by the emerging discipline of phys. chem. argued instead that drugs exerted their action through physicochem. properties that caused changes in the cells, rather than through firm chem. (essentially covalent) bonding to the cell. This paper will explore this debate and its place in the history of chem. and pharmacol.

Publisher

Division of the History of Chemistry

ISSN

1053-4385

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

article

Language

eng

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127557

DOI

https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2003v028p001

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2003 Division of the History of Chemistry

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