Approaches to Drug Discovery

Abstract

THE history of early drug discovery is essentially that of a random search for therapeutic agents from plants, animals and naturally occurring minerals. The medicine men and priests of many tribes and faiths tried out such natural materials, or aqueous or alcoholic extracts prepared from them, and by trial and error, over the centuries, established a materia medica that was transmitted from one generation to another with only relatively minor alterations.1 The botanical drugs and the preparations from animal tissues and some inorganic materials, used before the nineteenth century, represented a motley array of more or less toxic mixtures that . . .