The site at which anaesthetics act within the central nervous system (CNS) has been the subject of research for almost 100 years. Most success has been obtained in defining the physical nature of the site [70]. For example, the well established correlation of anaesthetic potency to fat solubility indicates that the site of action is hydrophobic. Research using anaesthetics with unusual solubili...

After 150 years of clinical anaesthesia, the molecular events that lead to anaesthesia have not been determined. This is not because of a lack of ideas [16-19, 56, 571. However, most striking to the observer is the paucity of long-term and systematic studies. The present review describes results from such a study. The long-term goals were: first, to understand how anaesthetics affect membrane p...

in cases where death had occurred during anaesthesia require the serious attention of the medical profession, and as I have now administered anaesthetics in several thousand cases, my experience with respect to the choice of the anaesthetic may be of interest. When I commenced giving anaesthetics at the General Hospital in 1891 chloroform was the routine anaesthetic. I was not satisfied, howeve...

Department of Surgery and Cancer, Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care Section, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, United Kingdom; Department of Anaesthetics, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, United Kingdom; Preclinical Compound Profiling, Secondary Pharmacology, Preclinical Safety, NIBR, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Departmen...