It covers the core information required by pharmacy students to understand the action of modern drugs on the human body.The third edition is larger than the previous edition and includes a new chapter on licensing of drugs and medicines which describes the make up and function of important committees such as the Commission of Human Medicines and the British Pharmacopoeia Commission. This includes material that is within the public domain and explains the process of getting a drug to market.The majority of the chapters include more worked examples/tutorial examples and the chapter on Analytical spectroscopy has been updated to include "qualitative" spectroscopic methods especially NMR, mass spectroscopy and some IR and the chapter on Stability of drugs and medicines has been updated to include a major section on "prodrugs" which are inactive compounds designed to decompose within the body to release the active moiety.