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Daniel Bovet, Nobelist: muscle relaxants in anaesthesia

The role played by two neglected protagonists

Daniel Bovet, Nobelpreisträger: Muskelrelaxanzien in der Anästhesie

Die Rolle zweier vernachlässigter Protagonisten

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Summary

In 1957, Professor Daniel Bovet received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies on various compounds including the muscle relaxants gallamine and succinylcholine that became very useful in anaesthesia. Textbooks credit Professor Bovet for the discovery of these drugs. However, although he indeed did discover their pharmacological character, the actual syntheses were made by Ernest Fourneau and Reid Hunt, respectively; sadly, these two scientists have largely been ignored. In this paper, a brief biography of Bovet is presented along with some of his more notable accomplishments. Particular emphasis has been placed on gallamine and succinylcholine along with their history. In an attempt to undo the “injustice” dealt to both Fourneau and Hunt, brief accounts of their history, story and character are provided.

Zusammenfassung

Professor Daniel Bovet erhielt 1957 den Nobelpreis für Physiologie oder Medizin für seine Studien zu verschiedenen Wirkstoffmischungen einschließlich der Muskelentspannungsmittel Gallamin und Succinylcholin, welche in der Anästhesie äußerst hilfreich sind. Fachbücher ehren Professor Bovet für die Entdeckung dieser Arzneimittel. Allerdings muss bemerkt werden, dass trotz der Tatsache, dass Professor Bovet ihren pharmakologischen Charakter entdeckt hat, die eigentlichen Zusammensetzungen von Ernest Fourneau bzw. Reid Hunt entwickelt wurden. Diese beiden Wissenschaftler wurden bisher leider größtenteils ignoriert. In diesem Dokument wird eine kurze Biographie Bovets zusammen mit seinen wichtigsten Errungenschaften aufgezeichnet. Besondere Schwerpunkte bilden Gallamin und Succinylcholin und ihre Geschichte. In einem Versuch, die „Ungerechtigkeit“, die sowohl Fourneau als auch Hunt angetan wurde, aufzuheben, wird ihnen ein kurzer Abriss ihrer Geschichte und ihres Charakters gewidmet.

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Notes

  1. The need for such drugs would become critical, especially for the Allied military forces when the Japanese conquered the Philippines and Java, the main sources of the bark of Cinchona sp.

  2. Berger describes a singular use of curare on patients with parkinsonism—for their spasticity, they received curare, 50 mg intramuscularly, either by the physician or themselves. An ampoule of edrophonium was kept on hand [12].

  3. George B Koelle, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania

  4. Willstätter was a Jew who, in spite of his scientific achievements, was not spared Hitler’s persecution and so with heaviness of heart, left his native land in 1939, for a village close to Locarno in Switzerland.

  5. A pleasing revelation concerning Stovaine surfaced in Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (18th ed.) where Stovainization is defined as: “The induction of spinal anaesthesia by subarachnoid injections of Stovaine”.

  6. Polypterus bichir was mistakenly believed to be a lungfish and a link between fishes and amphibians. Coloured greenish-yellow-brown, it has 13–18 dorsal finlets. The lower jaw is longer than the upper jaw. It is covered by scales of enamel, crawls with its fins and swims like an eel. Basking in the mud, it jumps from the water to gasp air into its air sacs. The adult male is some 75 cm long and weighs about 2.5 kg

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Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to the following: Professor Daniel Pierre Bovet for inviting me to his apartment in Rome and giving details of his father; Professor Marcel Bickel, Department of Medical History, University of Bern, for guidance during our many meetings in Zurich; Philippe Galanopoulos, Curator, BIU Santé, Paris, for the days spent with me in the literature search. I wish to thank the professors of anaesthesia: Richard SJ Clarke, Belfast, Gottfried Benad, Rostock and Klaus Olkkola, Helsinki, for reading the manuscript. The paper is in memory of those who taught me at the Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University.

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  1. Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital, PO Box 340 (Haartmaninkatu 4), 00029 HUS, Helsinki, Finland

    Dimitri A Cozanitis

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Cozanitis, D.A. Daniel Bovet, Nobelist: muscle relaxants in anaesthesia. Wien Med Wochenschr 166, 487–499 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10354-016-0481-y

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