The Emergence of the Dose–Response Concept in Biology and Medicine

Abstract

A historical assessment of the origin of the dose-response in modern toxicology and its integration as a central concept in biology and medicine is presented. This article provides an overview of how the threshold, linear and biphasic (i.e., hormetic) dose-response models emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and competed for acceptance and dominance. Particular attention is directed to the hormetic model for which a general description and evaluation is provided, including its historical basis, and how it was marginalized by the medical and pharmacology communities in the early decades of the 20th century.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 80 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.