Fever has always been recognised as the major sign of infectious disease as well as being associated with other illnesses. The suggestion of publishing a volume dedicated exclusively to the subject of fever in the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology series was one that greatly appealed to me, and I felt very honoured when I was invited to edit it. The first ideas about this volume were conceived in the latter part of 1977 and by the middle of 1978 the first authors had been approached. As is usual with such publications, by the time the first manuscripts were beginning to arrive in the late...

The first useful antibiotic found by screening was streptomycin. The late Prof. WAKSMAN started screening for antibacterial antibiotics in 1940 and, after finding actinomycin in 1941, he and his collaborators discovered streptomycin in 1944. This antibiotic made a great contribution in saving human lives from tuberculosis and acute serious infections. About 1957, after wide usage of such antibiotics as penicillin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol, tetracycline, and erythromycin, staphy- lococci and Gram negative organisms resistant to all or most antibiotic drugs ap- peared in hospital patients....

The Editorial Board of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology apparently did not hurry in suggesting production of a volume on glucagon since the present opus is number sixty-six in the series. This fact is even more striking if we consider that 34 volumes published over about eight years will separate the books on glucagon from those on insulin on library shelves, whereas only a few microns separate the cells manufacturing these two polypeptides within the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas! Numerous factors have probably caused this dicrimination; four of them are: First, insulin...

It is quite amazing that the oldest group of medically useful antibiotics, the fJ-Iactams, are still providing basic microbiologists, biochemists, and clinicians with surprises over 50 years after Fleming's discovery of penicillin production by Penicillium. By the end of the 1950s, the future of the penicillins seemed doubtful as resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus began to increase in hospital populations. However, the development of semisynthetic penicillins provided new structures with resistance to penicillinase and with broad-spectrum activity. In the 1960s, the discovery of...

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According to most studies, allergic reactions represent 35%-50% of all untoward reactions to drugs, yet the pharmacological literature concerning the clinical aspects, diagnosis, and pathophysiological mechanisms of drug allergy is markedly less extensive than reports dealing with the toxicological or pharmacological effects of drugs. The main reasons for this state of affairs may be on the one hand that until a few years ago the pathophysiological mechanisms of the various types of allergic reactions were not well understood, and on the other hand that objective diagnosis of a drug allergy...

Today, the basic mood of researchers and clinical investigators, both at the center and on the periphery of interferon studies, is optimistic regarding the future of interferons as therapeutic substances. Many also feel these polypeptides will prove invaluable probes in unraveling certain fundamental biochemical processes which control the life cycle and developmental pattern of many human cells. In contrast, only a year or two ago, this optimism had given way to an attitude almost of disenchantment as public and scientific expectations were raised steeply, then rapidly waned, as it turns...

Roots of the theory and practice of ocular pharmacology may be traced to the ancient Mesopotamian code of Hammurabi and then to several papyri reflecting the clinical interests of the Egyptians. The evolution of its art and science was irregularly paced until the nineteenth century when Kohler, in 1884, proved the anesthetic effect of cocaine on the cornea, and when Fraser, Laquer, Schmiedeberg, Meyer, and others studied the pharmacology of the autonomic nervous system by way of observations of the pupil. Advances in the past few decades have been nothing short of explosive. How can the...

Of all the parasitic diseases that beset man in the warmer parts of the world, malaria is still the major cause of morbidity and mortality. In spite of intensive efforts to interrrupt its transmission malaria still threatens over 800 million people, more than one-fifth of the world's population. Malignant tertian malaria caused by Plasmodium Jalciparum probably kills a million every year. Vivax malaria temporarily incapacitates millions more. The search for antimalarial drugs, both natural and syn. thetic, has been and continues to be one of the most challenging and, at times, rewarding...

The construction of this volume has been guided by two personal convictions. Experience in the field of experimental chemotherapy, both in the pharmaceutical industry and academia, has convinced us that recent quantum technological advances in biochemistry, molecular biology, and immunology will permit and, indeed, necessitate an increasingly greater use of rational drug development in the future than has been the custom up to now. In Part l, therefore, we asked our contributors to provide detailed reviews covering the biology of the malaria parasites and their relation with their hosts, the...