A Short History of the Drug Receptor Concept (review)

[...] it is not the beginning and the end but the middle part of this book that Jack Morrell would have liked, the period between, when physiologists, pharmacologists, and immunologists all worked with a range of physicochemical theories-gradients between the inside and outside of cells, adsorption on surfaces, physical solubility, and, I should add, the charge-based template theory of antibody production and the antigen-antibody reaction. The authors' discussion of the network of pharmacologists and of why Ahlquist found his community unreceptive to receptors is the most interesting part of the book, the part that justifies their claim that theirs is not a simple progress story with lots of technical detail but a study of the cultural practice of science.