Liquor made quicker: alcohol as a synthetic reagent for molecules in anesthesia.
Ethanol was an early anesthetic, and chemists transformed it into better ones. Hypnotic/anesthetic/analgesic molecules prepared from ethanol include barbiturates, benzocaine, chloral hydrate, chloroform, diethyl ether, ethyl chloride, ethylene, etomidate, meperidine, paraldehyde, phenacetin, procaine, tribromoethanol, and urethane. Ethanol was sometimes mixed deliberately with the other anesthetics, and John Snow's inhaled amylene came from the "fusel oil" fraction of rotgut whisky.
Fragoza
Keith
K
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Alston
Theodore A
TA
D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000266:history; D000777:Anesthetics / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000266:history; D001463:Barbiturates / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000266:history; D001566:Benzocaine / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000266:history; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000266:history / Q000378:metabolism; D002725:Chloroform / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000266:history; D000431:Ethanol / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000266:history / Q000378:metabolism; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century
D000777:Anesthetics; D001463:Barbiturates; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants; D000431:Ethanol; D002725:Chloroform; D001566:Benzocaine