Category:Medicines

Medicine, on Pharmacopedia, is used in a deliberately broad sense. It denotes any material with a meaningful pharmacological action on the body or mind, whether or not that material is used in clinical practice. The category therefore includes prescription and over-the-counter drugs, but equally the plants and fungi from which many medicines derive, the controlled and illicit materials, and everyday materials such as alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. A material is treated here as an object of knowledge: described, situated in its history, and explained, regardless of its legal status or how it is commonly regarded.

This breadth is intentional. The line conventionally drawn between a "medicine" and a "drug" is, on inspection, a line drawn by law, custom, and history rather than by pharmacology, and the same material has often sat on different sides of it in different eras and different places. Pharmacopedia sets that distinction aside and uses the single word medicine throughout, so that every material can be described on the same terms.

Category:Medicines is the top-level category of the wiki: every individual medicine page belongs to it. Each medicine page is built on a shared template that presents the medicine's classes, its history, its effects, and, where applicable, its clinical use and pharmacology in a consistent form.

Medicines are grouped into classes, each of which has its own category page. A class page is a history-first overview: it tells the story of how that group of medicines came to be understood and used, describes the shared properties of its members, and discusses their mechanisms and safety. Examples include the opioids, the benzodiazepines, the antidepressants, and the anesthetics. Many medicines belong to more than one class, and the class categories are the natural way to explore the wiki by subject.

The medicine pages aim to be accurate, plainly written, and useful both to clinicians and to general readers. They describe what is known and, where the science is genuinely unsettled, say so. They are a reference, not a source of medical advice: decisions about treatment belong with a qualified professional who knows the individual person.

The complete list of medicine pages appears below.