Citation

Perkins-McVey M. Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch. Pharmacol. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00210-023-02820-y

PMID

37947840

Abstract

Robert Mortimer Glover's contribution as the first to identify the anaesthetic effects of chloroform went unrecognized for over 130 years. Posterity now remembers Glover as the first to experimentally demonstrate the effects of chloroform, and yet, the scope and impact of the work for which he is remembered remains largely undiscussed. This historical article returns to Glover's dissertation, for which he won the Harveian Prize in 1842, and examines its experimental findings in their historical context. Departing from the body of literature which emphasizes the clinical orientation of early anaesthesiological research, it revisits the theoretical and methodological foundations of Glover's study, which, first and foremost, sought to examine the possibility of an analogy between chemical structure and physiological effect. In doing so, it establishes that Glover was not merely the first to realize the physiological effects of chloroform or even merely the earliest figure to recognize the effects of bromoform, potassium bromide, and "bromide of mercury," over two decades before Henry Behrend's or Protheroe Smith's classic papers. My examination concludes that Glover may have been the first to propose the existence of a unique class of anaesthetic compounds, establishing Glover as an early representative of anaesthetic pharmacology as a collective body of research and clinical practice.

Language: en

Keywords

History; Anaesthesia; Poisonous substances; Theories of drug action