Unit 1: What is a Medicine?

What is a Medicine?
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Where Do Medicines Come From?
Herbs that Heal: Chinese Medicine
Ancient Greek Medicine
An Ancient Herbal Remedy: Aspirin

Unit 2: How Medicines Work

How Aspirin Works
Routes of Administration
Getting to the Site of Action
What Makes Medicines Work?: Deciphering the Label
Chemistry for Comparison Shopping

Unit 3: Five Generations of Drug Discovery: Medicines of Yesterday and Today

ABC's of the FDA
The Germ Theory: Finding the Cause of Disease
The Production of Penicillin
Changing Technologies: The Impact of the Microscope on Medicines
Antibiotic Resistance
Celebrate Immunization

Unit 4: The Revolution in New Medicines

The Future of Pharmaceutical Research
AIDS Research: Finding the Cure
Rational Drug Design
Recombinant DNA Technology
Using Ion-Exchange Chromatography to Study Proteins
Transgenic Animals and Gene Therapy