Barbituric acidIn 1902, a patent is obtained for barbituric acid - hope for insomniacs. In 1864 Adolf von Baeyer, a twenty-nine-year-old assistant of Friedrich August Kekule (the discoverer of the molecular structure of benzene) in Ghent, synthesized barbituric acid, the first barbiturate. In 1903, the German chemist Emil Fischer and his collaborator Joseph von Mering modified a class of drugs originally synthesized in 1864 in a way that made them effective as sedatives and hypnotics. Fischer and Mering realized that their new drug, "diethyl barbituric acid," or barbital, was a sedative. It improved vastly upon the congeries of previous sedatives by not tasting unpleasant, by having few side effects, and by acting at therapeutic levels far beneath the toxic dose (unlike potassium bromide, which tasted awful and had a therapeutic level close to the toxic dose). Diallyl barbituric acid is a colourless crystalline organic compound. used in medicine as a soporific. |
