Pharmacology is the science of drugs. It has many sub-divisions like pharmacognosy, pharmacy, pharmacodynamics, pharmacotherapeutics, chemotherapy, toxicology and so on. Without going into the technical jargon pharmacology deals with the study of drugs with the aim of curing disease.

Since the dawn of history man has been intrigued by the ravages of disease, suffering and pain. Man has made efforts to find cures for his ailments by surgical,chemical and physio-chemical means. Superstition and witchcraft held ground for sometime in the past. Chinese medicine was about the earliest and dates back to about 2500 b.c. Ayurveda or Indian Medicine is about equally ancient. 

The Greek medicine is said to be the father of modern medicine, and borrowed much from the existing systems of medicine, and probably was responsible for the progressive evaluation of rational medicine through the Ages. The past 50 years have been packed with research, observation and deduction about drugs in their action against disease. We today live in the era of "drug explosion" and expect a pill for every illness.

The study of drugs in man is designated as clinical pharmacology. It provides methods for the assessment of usefulness, potency and toxicity of new drugs. Thus, controlled trials in man have to be conducted in man to assess the efficacy and safety of the drugs involved. The majority of drugs are developed by the pharmaceutical industry. The drug screening program is an interdisciplinary project, and involves chemists, pharmacologists, clinical pharmacologists and physicians.

In conclusion, pharmacology is the science of drugs, and it reveals as to how drugs act on the living organism, and applied judiciously this science can find safer and more efficacious drugs for the treatment of disease.