As single laevo-enantiomers,ropivacaine and levobupivacaine which have been generally researched are attracting extensive attention for their better anaesthetic effect and less system toxicity.
Then I realised that Holmes is a cocaine addict and Freud had been an early proponent of cocaine, starting as a use for anaesthetic during eye surgery, but he also was a user.
The British Formula One Racing driver Jenson Button and his wife have been burgled while on holiday in France by thieves who apparently pumped anaesthetic gas into their villa.
He describes " the instantaneous grief of being alone" , death as an " anaesthetic from which none come round" and the way misery, passed from parents to their children, " deepens like a coastal shelf" .
In the hope of restoring his eyesight, Tarkington had to go through more than twelve operations within one year. With local anaesthetic! Did he rail against this? He knew it had to be done.
Considering that safe anaesthetics and antibiotics were only discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a truly painful and risky business to go under the knife in the past.
I've also been recommended in the past from those of the redhead clan to inform anaesthetists that you do have the ginger gene and may need a higher level of anaesthetic.
So how does it go from being used as, effectively, a horse tranquilizer, but also as an anaesthetic, to becoming something recreational, to being something that teenagers want to buy?