Abstract
Ehrlich wrote before the turn of the 20th century that drugs are molecules and can only react with other molecules. Many inhalation anesthetics have been studied, but the intimate nature of the biological molecules which accept the anesthetic molecules and are affected by them is still almost completely unknown. Today attention is usually focused on the alteration of some biological action and the desirability or undesirability of this event. The molecules causing narcosis or anesthesia vary considerably in their structures and component atoms, and this variance has led to many studies of the correlations between the structures and properties of the anesthetic molecules and their effectiveness as anesthetic agents. Although such comparisons of properties and potency have led in the past, and will lead in the future, to a degree of predictability for the activity of new compounds or for the handling in the body of other members of a chemical series, the data so derived have been of very limited usefulness in attempts to understand the molecular aspects of the mechanism of action of inhalation anesthetics.
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Featherstone, R.M. (1972). Molecular Aspects. In: Chenoweth, M.B. (eds) Modern Inhalation Anesthetics. Handbuch der experimentellen Pharmakologie/Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, vol 30. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65055-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65055-0_16
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