Pharmaceutics is it an Art or Science?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AymanWaddad's picture
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The word pharmaceutics in pharmacy reflect many subject areas which are all associated with the steps involved in producing of our final finished products [1] . The question is, are all pharmacists qualified to be involved in pharmaceutical industry and production? I believe the answer is no. Pharmaceutics is neither is a science nor is an art but combination composed from both of them. We in Sudan have a common delicious salad composed of peanut butter with vegetables. I used to give this example of salad when I want to talk about emulsion, as we all know that emulsion composed of two immiscible liquids (oil and water), because we need to add oil so as to make our peanut butter soluble in that oil but because the resulted mixture is a little bit viscous we need to add a few amount of water which is immiscible with mixture of peanut butter. The amazing things is that our mothers and grandmothers used to do that without scientific background, but they notice that when they add a little amount lemon juice and the vegetables e.g. tomato which is rich with salts, both water and the peanut butter will have homogenous mixture, and to have a good flavor they add a little bit of salt with or without black pepper or may be red pepper. As we may notice those entire components in our simple delicious salad have its resemblance in pharmaceutical formulations e.g. electrolytes, surfactant, flavoring agents, solublizing agents, taste masking ...etc. This is a simple example showing that pharmacy and specially pharmaceutics surrounding all part of our life. I believe it is not only a science but art on integrating life and science.

1. Aulton,M.E. and J.W. Cooper, Pharmaceutics : the science of dosage form design. 1st ed. 1988, Edinburgh ; New York:Churchill Livingstone. xv, 734 p. A. Y. Waddad
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