Pharmaceutical industry is growing day by day with the aim to develop new drugs extracted from natural products or synthetic chemically produced drug substances, but one thing always remains constant, that is, the product should be as pure as possible. Therefore, purity has always been considered as an essential factor in ensuring drug quality. There is no known drug that is not harmful or even poisonous at high doses.
The gradual change from the use of natural products in their entire state to either purified extracts from those products or to synthetic chemically produced substances，can be said to have been taking place between the time of Paracelsus, who lived in Basel during the first half of the 16th century, to that of Ehrlich, to whom the award of a Nobel prize in 1909 was a fitting reward for his remarkable researches and breakthrough during the first decade of this century. This period has been described as that leading from Quintessence to the Chemical and has been fascinatingly reviewed by Barber. This transition from the Quintessence to the Chemical stimulated a very considerable amount of interest in the analysis as well as determination of purity of natural products, as De Quincey had said 100 years earlier, not the apparent quantities as determined by weighing but the virtual quantities after allowing for the alloy of impurities. Thus, there is no doubt that nearly a century of pharmaceutical research has contributed spectacularly to the improvement in human health and quality of life.
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To live out my fantasy
30 Jul 2016, 1:43 am
