Gesnerus. Supplement最新文献

1. The use of drugs goes back to the origins of mankind. In historical times oral drug-lore became codified empiric drug theory (materia medica) and ultimately, in the 19th century, experimental pharmacology. The initiator of experimental pharmacology as an independent medical discipline is Rudolf Buchheim (1820-1879). This study traces the pathways leading to Buchheim and identifies his predecessors between 1790 and 1850. The history of empirical pharmacology and its major theories in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modern times is summarized. For the 18th century an overview is given on early attempts at experimental testing of drug effects and on the new therapeutic systems and medical sects. 2. Many authors have dealt with the grievances of pharmacology and therapy between 1790 and 1850, among them chief representatives of contemporary medicine like the French Fourcroy, Bichat, Pinel, Alibert, Magendie, and the Germans Schönlein, Mitscherlich, Wunderlich, Henle, and Oesterlen. Their criticisms are a means for a better understanding of the situation. They cover the following aspects. Pharmacology is distorted by speculations on the causes of drug action and confusion with regard to terminology and indications. Drug actions are being tested with inadequate methods. An increase in the number of drugs is mistaken for an increase in knowledge. The statement is made that pharmacology is the least developed of all medical subjects. The critics point out that only a more developed chemistry, physiology, and etiology will allow a scientific pharmacology. The drug theories of the medical sects are likewise rejected. Polypharmacy, composite drugs, and absurd formulas are regarded with contempt. Aggressive drug therapy is repudiated, but this easily results in avoidance of drugs and in therapeutic nihilism. 3. In 1799 Johann Christian Reil elaborated his principles for a future pharmacology. Reil establishes the rules for clinical experiments on which a scientific pharmacology should be based. His goal is to explain the actions of drugs which are the results of biochemical alterations. Even though Reil's program is a theoretical conception, it anticipates a situation that was to take shape half a century later. Also in 1799 Adolph Friedrich Nolde published detailed rules for the critical examination of drug actions in patients, including aspects like placebo, compliance, statistics, and several ethical rules. Reil's and Nolde's programmatic messages vanished in the emerging German medicine of "Naturphilosophie". 4. In the decades after 1800 medicine was at its zenith in the Paris School. It became a hospital medicine, based on anatomy and pathology. François Magendie was one of its representatives. He started out as a physician in 1808 and became a physiologist who soon surpassed his teachers Bichat and Richerand. Magendie's sole interest were facts, which had to be unravelled by experiments, mainly on animals. He created modern physiology ba

Three major plague epidemics have been recorded worldwide up to this day: the Justinian plague in the 6th century, the Black Death in the 14th century and the recent 20th century pandemic. The latter occurred at a time of advanced microbiological knowledge which permitted the etiology and the modes of transmission and spread of this bacterial infectious disease to be clarified. The present thesis is an attempt to describe the changes in plague research that occurred during that period of time. While the German, Austrian, British, Russian and Egyptian plague Commissions studying the Indian plague outbreak after 1896 contributed only little to the fundamental epidemiological knowledge on plague, several individual researchers succeeded in discovering some of the key facts in the etiology and transmission of the disease. Alexandre Yersin discovered the pathogenic agent of plague (Hongkong 1894), E.H. Hankin, P.L. Simond (Bombay 1898) and J.A. Thompson (Sydney 1900) recognized the role of rat plague, M. Ogata (Formosa 1897) and P.L. Simond (Bombay 1898) observed the transmission of the disease by fleas, and A.W. Bacot and C.J. Martin (1914) described the specific mechanism of transmission of plague. Accordingly, fleas transmit plague from rat to man, the efficiency of the flea as a vector depending on a blocking phenomenon specific of each flea species. The Indian rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) has been recognized the most efficient vector. Although the involvement of wild rodents was already known shortly after the turn of this century, the concept of sylvatic plague (the plague of wild rodents) as opposed to murine plague (the plague of commensal rodents) only emerged between 1920 and 1950. It led to taking stock of all hosts and vectors of the disease and thereby defining the natural foci of plague. According to this concept plague is primarily a disease of wild rodents which have been carrying it together with their fleas since ever. As man and urban rats only become infected occasionally, they do not constitute chronic foci. The occurrence of persistent foci rather depends on the interaction of resistant and sensitive wild rodents (burrowing animals) as was discovered by French researchers in the Middle East as late as the 1950s and 1960s. The concept of rodent-dependent transmission was somewhat attenuated by the discovery of direct interhuman transmission by French researchers between 1930 and 1965.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)