Article ID: CBB563601457

Responses by Australian pharmacologists to respiratory depression caused by opiates and barbiturates (2022)

unapi

In the middle of the last century, pharmacologists at the University of Melbourne led by Professor Frank Shaw inadvertently discovered that an amino-acridine they were using in other experiments reversed the respiratory depressive effects of morphine. They widened their search for such activity, experimenting with a range of heterocyclic substances and achieving success with a thiazole derivative, provided to them by the Professor of Organic Chemistry at the university, that countered the effects of morphine. Working with chemists and pharmacologists at a company with which Shaw had close links, Nicholas Pty Ltd, they discovered a glutarimide that offered the same benefit in cases of barbiturate intoxication. While this collaboration between pharmacologists and chemists, in industry and university, promised much, neither of these drugs survived into modern medical practice. The reasons for this include the development of better drugs or more appropriate patient care, Shaw’s withdrawal from the work because of illness, and decisions in the company that might have been influenced by increasingly stringent requirements for the registration of new drugs. Nonetheless this was important research that drew on the depth of expertise in pharmacology and chemistry among university researchers and a major Australian company with whom they collaborated and exchanged personnel.

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Authors & Contributors
Zhou, Xun
Berridge, Virginia
Courtwright, David T.
Derks, Hans
Dikötter, Frank
Dormandy, Thomas
Journals
Pharmacy in History
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
American Historical Review
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Historical Records of Australian Science
History of Psychiatry
Publishers
Brill
IASP Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Lexington Books
Matthiesen Verlag
Reaktion Books
Concepts
Narcotics and drugs
Opium and opium trade
Pharmacy
Medicine
Public health
Medicine and society
People
Biot, Jean-Baptiste
Freud, Sigmund
Galen
Laurent, Auguste
Masson, David Orme
Ramsay, William
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
16th century
17th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Asia
China
Afghanistan
Great Britain
India
Institutions
Universiteit Leiden
University of Melbourne
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