PHARMACOLOGY – General Info
Pharmacology was by far the hardest subject of the 2nd year medical course in Cambridge. The content is massive, both in terms of background information and number of drugs to learn (over 300 compounds). But putting aside the painful and long process of working through all the material, I actually found pharmacology one of the most interesting topics of the year, and certainly very important in terms of preparing for the clinical years.
In terms of books to accompany the course, I absolutely recommend Rang&Dale’s Pharmacology. In fact, I think this is one of the best textbooks I’ve ever read. It has a few great introductory chapters, and the more detailed content is excellently presented. It is extremely well written and well illustrated. I even used it to look up topics that came up in other subjects (for example Neurology). If you read the relevant chapters in Rang&Dale first, it will become much easier to read the Cambridge course handout, which is quite hard to digest at times (to say the least).
ALSO SEE PHARMACOLOGY SUBSITES FROM THE DROPDOWN MENU.