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Handedness in Anesthetic Pharmacology

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Anesthesia for the New Millennium

Part of the book series: Developments in Critical Care Medicine and Anesthesiology ((DCCA,volume 34))

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Abstract

The historical beginnings of stereochemistry are a fascinating piece of scientific detective work dating back to the early career of French chemist Louis Pasteur in the 1840s. Pasteur, then a young man, was interested in crystallography. While examining the crystals of tartaric acid salts with a hand lens, he serendipitously noticed that sodium ammonium tartrate existed as two distinct kinds of crystals that were mirror images of each other. After laboriously separating the right and left handed forms of the crystals into two piles, Pasteur discovered that, while the original mixture had been optically inactive, each individual pile of crystals rotated polarized light when dissolved in solution. Furthermore, the specific rotations of the two solutions were exactly equal but opposite in direction!

Authors Note: This chapter was adapted with permission from Egan TD: Stereochemistry and Anesthetic Pharmacology: Joining Hands With the Medicinal Chemists. Anesth Analg 1996; 83:447–50

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Authors
  1. Talmage D. Egan
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, The University of Utah Medical School, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Theodore H. Stanley  & Talmage D. Egan  & 

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Egan, T.D. (1999). Handedness in Anesthetic Pharmacology. In: Stanley, T.H., Egan, T.D. (eds) Anesthesia for the New Millennium. Developments in Critical Care Medicine and Anesthesiology, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4566-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4566-4_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5935-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4566-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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