The medical school's 1893 course listing described pharmacology - or "materia medica and therapeutics" as it was called at the time - as consisting of "didactic lectures and recitations with practice in writing prescriptions." This course was presented to second-year students by Dr. Frank Wheatley, who became the first chair of the newly named Department of Pharmacology in 1915.

Dr. Wheatley was succeeded by Drs. Frank E. Haskins (1922 -1936); James C. Healy (1936-1948), and Byron B. Clark (1956-1958). In 1958 Dr. Morris Friedkin was appointed chairman; he later became successful in developing a modern department of pharmacology, recruiting a number of new faculty members, and establishing a strong research program that focused on biochemical pharmacology.

When Dr. Friedkin became the chair of the biochemistry department in 1967, most members of his department accepted positions as biochemists, which necessitated the reconstitution of the Department of Pharmacology. It became difficult to find a new chair of pharmacology, and this situation was further complicated by Dr. Friedkin's departure from Tufts in 1968. The search for leadership of the two departments was unproductive, and after much thought it was decided to combine them. In 1969 Dr. Henry Mautner was appointed to chair the combined department, which taught both biochemistry and pharmacology. After he retired in 1984, Dr. David Stollar became the acting chair. Two years later the departments were made separate again. Dr. Stollar was named chairman of biochemistry and Dr. Louis Shuster was appointed acting chair of pharmacology. Drs. Thomas W. North and Theoharis Theoharides joined him as a nucleus for a future Department of Pharmacology.

In 1991 Dr. Richard I. Shader, an internationally known psychopharmacologist who had previously been head of Tufts' Department of Psychiatry, was appointed professor and chairman of the newly named Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Shader, who received his M.D. degree from New York University and trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the NIH, has served as president of both the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Under his leadership, a number of outstanding faculty have been recruited to the department and a psychopharmacology unit has been established. The department has also made progress toward its goal of furthering the understanding of the effects of drugs and toxic substances on the cellular and molecular make-up of humans and animals. In the past year the department's faculty have received a variety of honors: Dr. David J. Greenblatt has been cited for being among the world's twenty most frequently published authors in refereed scientific journals; Dr. Lawrence G. Miller has been named the recipient of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics' Leon Goldberg Young Investigator Award; and Dr. Theoharides has been selected to receive an "excellence in teaching" citation by the graduating class.

Source: COE, 149-51.

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