Pharmacy background reading

[Amanda]

I am applying to do pharmacy this year and I want to read a book that is related to pharmacy, e.g. the placebo effect. This is to assist me in my interviews

Any suggestions?

[Nik]

Books ? I never read any books although i suppose you could :

1) Research into how penicillin was discovered
2) Pop in to your local pharmacy and check out what stuff is OTC, P and Prescription only
3) Find some info on a few drugs e.g ibuprofen or if you really want to impress you can talk about statins (plenty of info in the news)

Not to mention having a look at these sites:

News | PJ Online

BBC NEWS | Health

[johnep]

A good read is 'Aspirin' by Diamuid Jefferies.
johnep

[johnep]

Interested in development of computing? I commend the following.
I have just finished 'Jacquard's Web' by James Essinger. Jacquard invented a programmable loom in the early 1800s. Led to the use of punch cards and indirectly to modern computers.
In 1951, I visited Festival Of Britain on the South Bank and was impressed by a calculating machine called 'The Differential Analyser'. In 1961 I joined Roche and during the induction course was taken to see The Computer. All I could see was a shelf with 1,000s of punch cards which we still used for computer input in the 80s. I vaguely remember having them for the Drs I was seeing as a rep.
With Leo we had a Psion for recording calls. I remember asking for more memory and was told that a 1mb card cost £200.

At the time, Commodore were advertising their home computer with the 'elephantine' memory of 64k.
I still have not found an illustrated account of exactly how a Jacquard loom works, but have turned up a load of information on IBM and it's history.
johnep

[bolam]

i was never asked anything pharmacy based in my interviews really, there was whats the difference between intramuscular and intravenous injection at Manchester then some basic chemistry at Cardiff but I think they just want to see that you can communicate.