Principles of Pharmacology
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course on how drugs work in the body. Rather than surveying the pharmacopoeia, it builds an analytical approach grounded in biophysics, biochemistry, and physiology, covering mechanisms of drug action, dose-response relations, pharmacokinetics, drug delivery systems, drug metabolism, toxicity, drug interactions, and substance abuse. Instruction combines lectures with student-led case discussions, and selected drug classes are examined in depth to illustrate the underlying principles. Materials include lecture notes and assignments from MIT's Health Sciences and Technology division, free to access under a Creative Commons license. The course targets students who already have background in the biological sciences and want a systematic framework for understanding how pharmacological agents are absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and how they exert their effects, rather than memorized facts about individual drugs.