Pharmacology Education in Undergraduate and Graduate Medical Education in the United States

Pharmacology is considered a core course for virtually every medical school in the world. Although the study and teaching of the properties of drug‐like substances dates from at least ancient Greece and Egypt,1 Oswald Schmiedeberg (1838–1921) at the University of Strassburg in Germany is generally recognized as the founder of modern pharmacology.2,3 Schmiedeberg himself trained many of the first generation of modern academic pharmacologists, including the first chair of pharmacology in North America, John Jacob Abel at the University of Michigan.1 Furthermore, the discovery, development, and use of morphine during the U.S. Civil War bolstered the desire for future physicians to be taught about the properties of drugs, and by the 1890s almost every medical school had a course on drugs.1 Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2007) 82 134–137. doi:10.1038/sj.clpt.6100266