Medical Applications
Paraldehyde was introduced into clinical practice in the UK by the Italian physician Vincenzo Cervello in 1882.
It is a CNS depressant and was soon found to be an effective anticonvulsant, hypnotic and sedative. It was included in some cough medicines as an expectorant (though there is no known mechanism for this function beyond the placebo effect).
Paraldehyde was the last injection given to Edith Alice Morrell in 1950 by the suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. He was tried for her murder but acquitted.
Read more about this topic: Paraldehyde
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“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)