Read the text attentively, use a dictionary. Find or check the meaning of the words you don't know

WHAT IS PHARMACY?

Pharmacy is defined as the art of recognizing, identifying, collecting; select­ing, preparing, storing, compounding and dispensing drugs used in preventive or in curative medicine for treating people.

Pharmacy was an integral part of medicine when preparative pharmaceutical techniques were simple. It became an independent branch of medicine when an in­creasing variety of drugs and their complex compound­ing demanded specialists familiar with the technique of their compounding. Thus we may define pharmacy as the science of drugs. The word "pharmacy" comes from the Greek word "pharmakon" which in the modern language means "a drug". To the Greeks it was associated with a god or higher being who had the power of affecting peo­ple with herbs, infusions, etc.

Pharmacy is as old as man himself. The first primi­tive man who tried to use a plant in the food and observed that it caused a disease was already in the drug business. In this simple way many drags have been discovered.

The civilization of the past contributed to our present knowledge by the collec­tion of drugs and drug preparations. The old Egyptian texts list many preparations, some components of which are still used in modified form. In these works the im­portant beginning of the science pharmacognosy may be seen. Galen, in the second century A.D. one of the most famous physicians of the past wrote much about drug effects. Even today pharmacists use the word "galenicals" when they speak about simple vegetable extracts.

However, only in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries chemical know­ledge advanced to the point at which it could contribute significantly to pharmacology.

The first and the most important was the isolation in relatively pure chemical form of the active constituents of plants. For example, Serturner isolated morphine in 1806 from opium. It took man over 5000 years to make this very important step. The industrial revolution of the last century gave birth to synthetic organic chemis­try and established a new branch of knowledge necessary for the synthesis of new drags.

That the drag may affect the organism or may act more selectively was an empirical observation of a primitive man. However, it took many centuries to estab­lish this empirical observation scientifically. Today the biochemical investigation of drug action is as important as the older pharmacodynamic studies.

ІІІ. Post-Reading Activities

1. Read the text again and write out adjectives, which go together with the following nouns. Arrange your findings in the given table.

Paragraph I: medicine Paragraph V: form

Paragraph II: part constituent

technique step

variety Paragraph VI: revolution

specialist chemistry

language branch of knowledge

being Paragraph VII: observation

Paragraph III: pharmacy investigation

man study

way

Paragraph IV: knowledge

beginning

physician

extract

2. Check how well your partner understands the text What is Pharmacy?

by asking him/her the following questions.

1. What is pharmacy?

2. What do you know about the history of pharmacy?

3. What do you know about the derivation of the word "pharmacy"?

4. Did the civilization of the past contribute to our present knowledge?

5. What do you know about Galen?

6. What was the most important step to contribute to pharmacology?

7. What is the role of industrial revolution in the development of a pharmacy?

8. What does the biochemical investigation of drug action provide? 9 What new facts have you found out about your future speciality? 10. Why do we say that pharmacy and medicine develop together?

3. Finish the sentences choosing one of the collocations.

1) Pharmacy became an independent science...

a) when preparative pharmaceutical technique was simple;

b) when the first primitive man tried to use plants in the food;

c) when complex compounding of drugs demanded specialists in pharmacy.

2) The important beginning of the science pharmacognosy may be seen...

a) in a modified form;

b) by their collection of drugs and drug preparations;

c) in the old Egyptian text.

3) It took the civilization over five thousand years...

a) to isolate morphine;

b) to isolate active constituents of crude drugs;

c) to establish the type knowledge necessary for the synthesis of new drugs.

Поиск по сайту: