Rang H.P., Ritter J.M., Flower R.J., Henderson J. Rang and Dale's Pharmacology

8th edition. — Elsevier Ltd, 2016. — 738 p.In this edition, as in its predecessors, we set out not just to describe what drugs do but also to emphasise the mechanisms by which they act. This entails analysis not only at the cellular and molecular level, where knowledge and techniques are advancing rapidly, but also at the level of physiological mechanisms and pathological disturbances. Pharmacology has its roots in therapeutics, where the aim is to ameliorate the effects of disease, so we have attempted to make the link between effects at the molecular and cellular level and the range of beneficial and adverse effects that humans experience when drugs are used for therapeutic or other reasons. Therapeutic agents have a high rate of obsolescence, and more than 100 new ones have been approved since the last edition of this book. An appreciation of the mechanisms of action of the class of drugs to which a new agent belongs provides a good starting point for understanding and using a new compound intelligently.