After thousands of years of intuition and trial and error led people to believe that plants, animals, and minerals had therapeutic properties, the modern era of the pharmaceutical industry—characterized by compound isolation and purification, chemical synthesis, and computer-aided drug design—is generally regarded as having started in the 19th century. The understanding of fundamental drug-discovery processes improved with the integration of research in the 20th century in disciplines like physiology and chemistry. The pharmaceutical sector is currently faced with obstacles such as finding new therapeutic targets, obtaining regulatory approval from government bodies, and improving drug research and development methods. The global control and eradication of disease depends critically on the pharmaceutical industry’s ongoing development and advancement.