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Undergraduate students at UWA are having fun with drugs.

A broadening unit, Drugs that Changed the World , offered by the School of Medicine and Pharmacology, is attracting hundreds of students.

Professor Fiona Pixley, Head of the School's Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Anaesthesiology Unit said that when New Courses called for broadening unit proposals in 2009, she and her colleagues saw an opportunity to develop new ways of teaching pharmacology.

Pharmacology studies how drugs affect the human body while also seeking to use that knowledge to fight diseases.

Professor Phil Burcham who oversaw the development of the new course, said: "In essence, its mission is to ensure the best drug is given in the right dose to the appropriate patient for the correct duration. So this branch of science fosters the proper use of medicines by anaesthetists, doctors, pharmacists, dentists and veterinarians.

"We thought pharmacology was only interesting to science and medical students, but the popularity of this unit shows that with a bit of imagination, creativity and enthusiasm, the issues surrounding drug innovation can engage students in other degree streams including Arts, Commerce and Design."

Drugs that Changed the World was first offered as a Category A broadening unit last year.  Following strong enrolments then, its popularity grew considerably, with more than 440 students enrolled this year.

Teaching such large numbers of first year students presented logistical challenges to the small Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Anaesthesiology Unit, but Professor Burcham said the experience generally proved exhilarating.

With input from the School's pharmacologists, anaesthesiology academics from major Perth hospitals and historians from the School of Humanities and the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, a curriculum was developed that features ten unit modules.

These include the Oldest Drug (Alcohol), the Kindest Drug (Ether), the Poisonous Drug (Mustard gas), the Horror Drug (Thalidomide), the Liberating Drug (Chlorpromazine) and the Explosive Drug (Nitroglycerin).

Professor Pixley said that Professor Burcham's 20 years' experience in teaching pharmacology and toxicology to undergraduates in Perth and Adelaide and his internationally-recognised expertise in studying chemically-induced disease underpinned his introductory lectures on thalidomide toxicity and alcoholic liver disease.

"With more than 3,000 medicines in use, all of which differ in their precise chemical and medicinal properties, the pharmacology curriculum offered to science or medical students is highly selective, focusing on the main scientific and clinical factors accompanying the use of common medicines," Professor Burcham said.

"Typically, this conventional approach offers little scope for exploring many fascinating issues surrounding the use of medicines, with one big question often overlooked:   Where exactly did all the drugs in current use come from?

"Chat to a pharmacologist for any length of time and you will learn that the emergence of many medicines is delightfully unpredictable, involving a fascinating mix of astute observation, dogged scientific investigation, serendipity, confrontation with entrenched medical orthodoxy and intense corporate competition," he said.

"Conventional courses can also minimise the unfortunate ‘underbelly' of pharmaceutical innovation: the hunger for financial profit has sometimes led to the marketing of drugs that bring marginal benefits to patients or, even worse, do greater harm than good."