Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Gerhard Schrader: Father of the Nerve Agents — The Collaborative on Health and the Environment

The problem with organophosphates, as well as carbamates (another class of insecticide), is that they affect an important neurotransmitter common to both healthandenvironment.org/environmental-…

insects and mammals.

This neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, is essential for nerve cells to be able to communicate with each other.

In 1867, Adolf von Baeyer resolved the structures of choline and acetylcholine and synthetized them both, referring to the latter as

"acetylneurin" in the study. Choline is a precursor for acetylcholine. This is why Frederick Walker Mott and William Dobinson Halliburton noted in 1899 that choline injections decreased the blood pressure of animals.

Baeyer was born in Berlin as the son of the noted geodesist

and lieutenant-general in the Royal Prussian Army Johann Jacob Baeyer and his wife Eugenie Baeyer née Hitzig (1807–1843).

Numerous venoms and toxins produced by plants, animals, and bacteria, as well as chemical nerve agents such as Sarin, cause harm by inactivating or

hyperactivating muscles through their influences on the neuromuscular junction.

It remains unclear why Baeyer chose to name the compound that he discovered "barbituric acid".

Barbituric acid is the parent compound of barbiturate drugs, although barbituric acid itself is not

pharmacologically active.

Sodium thiopental is an ultra-short-acting barbiturate that is marketed under the name Sodium Pentothal. It is often mistaken for "truth serum", or sodium amytal, an intermediate-acting barbiturate that is used for sedation and to treat insomnia, but

was also used in so-called sodium amytal "interviews" where the person being questioned would be much more likely to provide the truth whilst under the influence of this drug.

An artillery officer is said to have christened the new substance by amalgamating Barbara with urea.

Another story was barbiturate was invented on the feast day of St. Barbara. Another story holds that Baeyer synthesized the substance from the collected urine of a Munich waitress named Barbara. No substance of medical value was discovered, however, until 1903 when two German

scientists working at Bayer, Emil Fischer and Joseph von Mering, discovered that barbital was very effective in putting dogs to sleep.

Barbital was then marketed by Bayer under the trade name Veronal.

Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa deliberately overdosed on the drug in

1927, as did Un Chien Andalou actor Pierre Batcheff in 1932, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in 1942 and Greek musician Attik in 1944. During The Holocaust, many Jewish residents of Berlin, Dresden, Wiesbaden and other German cities used Veronal to commit suicide to avoid

deportation to concentration camps by the Nazi Regime. Alfred Kerr German theatre critic and essayist on a trip to Germany after WWII, suffered a stroke, and decided to end his own life via an overdose of Veronal, procured for him by his wife
In the D. H. Lawrence story, The

Lovely Lady, the titular character dies from a self-administered overdose.
Barbital, under the name of "Veronal", has been used as a plot device in the author Agatha Christie's murder mysteries.

Towards the end of his life, Akutagawa began suffering from visual hallucinations

and anxiety over the fear that he had inherited his mother's mental disorder. In 1927 he survived a suicide attempt, together with a friend of his wife. He later died of suicide after taking an overdose of Veronal, which had been given to him by Saito Mokichi on 24 July of the

same year.