Concept
Drug
Overview
A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestion, absorption via a patch on the skin, suppository, or dissolution under the tongue.
A pharmaceutical drug, also called a medication or medicine, is a chemical substance used to treat, cure, prevent, or diagnose a disease or to promote well-being. Traditionally drugs were obtained through extraction from medicinal plants, but more recently also by organic synthesis. Pharmaceutical drugs may be used for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Such a precaution, for example, as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive of its dangerous character, may be enforced without violation of liberty: the buyer cannot wish not to know that the thing he possesses has poisonous qualities. But to require in all cases the certificate of a medical practitioner, would make it sometimes impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article for legitimate uses…
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
States what Drug is; opens on Drug.
By their bitterness these show that they affect the extremities of the nerves, while, by their tonic properties, they show that they affect the nervous centres: the most intensely bitter among them, strychnia, being the most powerful nervous stimulant.[11] However true it may be that this relation is not a regular one, since opium, hashish, and some other drugs, which work marked effects on the brain, are not…
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
Names Drug twice; opens on Drug.
Still more strongly will a similar presumption exist, when the object itself, as in the case of organized beings, is no primeval agent, but an effect, which depends on a cause or causes for its very existence. The Kinds, therefore, which are called in chemistry simple substances, or elementary natural agents, are the only ones, any of whose properties can with certainty be considered ultimate; and of these the…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Drug is.
Philosophers who discussed Drug
Related ideas
- Cognition
- Government
- Abrahamic religions
- Iberian Peninsula
- Mental disorder
- Well-being
- Medical doctor
- Indigenous peoples of the Americas
- Psychosis
- Perception
- Shamanism
- Brill Publishers
- Al-Andalus
- Public health
- Consciousness
- Anxiety
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.