ABSTRACT
It would have been impossible to write a book of any length detailing mechanisms of drug action more than 20 years ago, because very little was known at that time. Penicillin, for example, had been on the market for 20 years, but we were still far from detailing its precise mode of action. The philosophical attitude, prevalent in those days and still common now, was that drugs were just used because they worked: enquiry into their mode of action was deemed unnecessary. The fact that, at that time, our detailed understanding of biological processes was very limited, may not be unconnected. Many of us entering the drug industry in the 1960s hoped, however, to be able to design drugs more effectively on the basis of molecular structure, whether it be of the enzyme or the receptor.
