While teaching jointly in the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology, Goodman and Gilman began developing a course textbook that emphasized relationships between pharmacodynamics and pharmacotherapy, introduced recent pharmacological advances like sulfa drugs, and discussed the history of drug development.
[2] Although rapid pharmacological innovations were made in the years immediately following—including the introduction of chemotherapy, steroids, antibiotics, and antihistamines—a second edition could not be completed until 1955 because of the authors' service in World War II.
Alfred Goodman Gilman, the son of Alfred Gilman and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, joined as senior editor for the book's sixth, seventh, and eighth editions, and a contributing editor to the ninth and tenth.
The first edition reviewer was highly enthusiastic and said that he was “delirious in his appraisal of the book”, that it was an “amazing work”, and “the product of enormous industry and keen insight”.
[6] The 6th edition published in 1980 was praised for the extensive bibliography, but also noted that, although “this book is recommended to all those who prescribe drugs”, it had become “too large to be used by medical students as a routine textbook”.