ABSTRACT
Pharmaceutical manufacturers perform most of the drug formulations any given patient may need, work that in the past used to be the main professional practice of the pharmacist. The degree of sophistication of their knowledge of the action of drugs in living organisms has given pharmacists the opportunity to become the chemical experts in the healthcare team. Most drugs are organic compounds that behave as weak acids or bases in the aqueous medium of the living organism. Four elements from the periodic table constitute at least 99% of the makeup of living organisms: hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and carbon (C). The periodic table is an arrangement of all known elements in increasing order of atomic number. An increment of one in atomic number in consecutive positions along a row (period) in the periodic table means that each consecutive element has one more proton in its nucleus and one more electron in its orbitals than its predecessor.
