Random Drug Factoids
This assorted collection of miscellany & irrelevance is designed to liven up/bore your colleagues during ward rounds. Not all these drugs are used in ICU or even available in New Zealand. All information has been gathered from a variety of sources over some years then supplemented with crowd-sourced anecdotes from social media.
Unlike the rest of the drug manual, what follows may be interesting but should not be taken as fact. As such, sources & references are not provided.
If you wish to contribute to this arcane irrelevance or disagree with any of its assertions, please contact the author using the footer links below.
Both generic & trade names of medicines are provided to help those of us who don't work in North America.
If you wish to contribute to this arcane irrelevance or disagree with any of its assertions, please contact the author using the footer links below.
Both generic & trade names of medicines are provided to help those of us who don't work in North America.
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Warfarin
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Coumarin
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Warfarin is derived from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation which developed it as rat poison. The suffix '-arin' was added, taken from 'coumarin', the plant molecule responsible for the smell of cut grass. Coumarin was discovered after de-horned cattle bled to death having ingested spoiled sweet clover.
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Aspirin
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The Greek word 'speira' meaning coil gives its name to the Spiraea plant from which salicylic acid was purified by the German firm, Bayer, in 1897. Consequently the German name for salicylic acid was 'spursäure' from which the derived drug exists in an acetylated form (as acetylsalicylic acid) so an 'A' was added (for acetyl) to give the patented name Aspirin.
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Rocuronium
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Esmeron
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Rocuronium is a non-depolarising neuromuscular blocking agent (muscle relaxant) that has a Rapid Onset. CURO is derived from 'curare', a paralysing poison used by South American indigenous people. The word 'curare' is taken from wurari, from the Carib language of the Macusi Indians of Guyana. See also pancuronium & vecuronium.
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Rifampicin
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Rifadin
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Rifampicin is one of the more obscure drug names, derived from analysis of a soil sample from a pine forest in the French Riviera in 1957 from which a new bacterium was discovered in a research lab in Milan. The subsequent derived compounds were named 'rifamycins' after a French crime film about a jewel heist called 'Rififi' that the researchers were particularly fond of.
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Atropine
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Atropine is from the Greek goddess, Atropos, the oldest of the Three Fates known as the 'inflexible' or 'inevitable'. She chose the mechanism of death and so ended the life of mortals by cutting their life thread with shears. The deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) was named after her from which atropine was derived. Belladonna itself (Italian for 'beautiful lady') is named after the pupillary dilation effect which was thought to make women with large pupils more attractive (to men). As opposed to poisoned.