The Greek word κλίνη means bed. That is, in the broadest sense, the clinic is deals with putting a person to bed, illness, and fighting the disease: organs and anatomical formations that are sites for illness, signs and symptoms of diseases, physiological and pathological processes and conditions, methods of diagnosis and treatment.
Historically, the clinic and its terminology began to take shape much earlier than anatomy and anatomical terminology. This is understandable: as long as your leg does not hurt, you don’t think about it, but as soon as it hurts, you have to look for words to name where, what and how it hurts. Clinical scientific terminology (as, indeed, any terminology) first began to develop in Greek. Therefore, for the anatomical terms that you already know, you will now have to learn Greek clinical names. Thus, the mouth, while nothing is wrong with it in it, is called os (and taking medicine by mouth is called per os). But as soon as a disease begins, this Latin os, oris n turns into the Greek στόμα, ατος (Latinized stoma, atos, stem stomat-), and stomatologia comes in. However, only anatomical terms are duplicated in this way; the rest were originally Greek, and after being latinized remain so.
Another fundamental difference between clinical and anatomical terminology. In anatomy, terms are formed from whole Latin words, according to all the rules of agreement in Latin grammar. In clinical terminology, terms are not composed of whole Greek words, but of their parts, elements, combining forms. Why such difference?
The reason lies in the specificity of these sciences and their subject matter. Anatomy deals with the study of man and has already established, named and described almost everything in the human body. Anatomical terminology is a closed terminological system that has almost no reason to expand further.
On the contrary, clinical terminology is an open and never closed terminological system, since there are more and more diseases, methods of diagnosis and treatment; as they develop, more and more new terms are needed. The process is endless. In this situation, the only way out is to compose new terms not from whole words, obeying the grammar of words, but from their elements. And these words are ancient Greek words, with which terminology began, with which it developed and will always continue. Not because someone wanted or ordered it, but because it is very convenient and universal for the whole world. The ancient Greek language is now dead, the Greek prefixes and roots of words will never change their meaning now; they have always been used by everyone, and are familiar to everyone.
Therefore, new terms are just a new combination of old elements, whose meanings constitute the general meaning of the «new» word. This way of forming words and scientific terms in general is accepted all over the world. Like in pharmaceutical terminology, in clinical terminology the Greek and Latin elements are also called combining forms.
Beginning somewhere in mid-twentieth century clinical pharmacology is actively developing as a separate special pharmaceutical industry that studies the effect of drugs on the patient’s body. Clinical pharmacology is inevitably closely related to other areas of medicine and biology. The issues of choosing a drug for the treatment of a particular patient, determining the most appropriate dosage forms and their mode of use, routes of drug administration, prevention and elimination of adverse reactions, etc. are solved precisely with the help of clinical pharmacology.
Let us recall the basic terms of clinical pharmacology.
Pharmacokinetics (φάρμακον — drug, κίνησις — movement) is a section of pharmacology studying the movement and change of drugs within the body: absorption, distribution, biotransformation, excretion, etc.
Pharmacodynamics (φάρμακον — drug, δύναμις — impact, strength) is a section of pharmacology studying the effect of medicinal substances on the human body and the mechanism of their action.
Pharmacogenetics (φάρμακον — drug, γένεσις — birth) is a doctrine of the effects of genetic characteristics on the transformation of medicinal substances in it.
Pharmacotherapy (φάρμακον — drug, θεραπεία — patient care) is a section of pharmacology studying the treatment of a patient with drugs.
The following types of pharmacotherapy are distinguished.
Pharmacy (ancient Greek pharmakeia — manufacture and use of medicines) is research and practical use of medicines.
Pharmaceutics (ancient Greek pharmakeutike techne — pharmaceutical art) is the industry manufacturing medicines.
Pharmacology is the science that studies the action of medicinal substances on the body.