• Anesthesia and analgesia · Jan 2025

    Historical Article

    James Watt, of Steam Engine Fame, Offered Inhaled Carbon Monoxide for Putative Therapeutic Action.

    • Olivia W Xu, Jingping Wang, and Theodore A Alston.
    • From the Undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences, New York University, New York, New York.
    • Anesth. Analg. 2025 Jan 1; 140 (1): 197201197-201.

    AbstractJames Watt (1736-1819) is remembered as a steam engine innovator and industrial magnate. A polymath, he was also a hands-on contributor to the Medical Pneumatic Institution of Thomas Beddoes. Watt recruited Humphry Davy, who there discovered analgesic action of inhaled nitrous oxide in 1799. Watt also built pneumatic equipment, and he introduced a gas mixture, dubbed hydro-carbonate, as a medical tonic. The bioactive component was carbon monoxide, a readily-lethal inhibitor of the transport and utilization of respiratory oxygen. Despite appreciable toxicity, carbon monoxide is an endogenous product of heme catabolism, and low doses of the gas are under laboratory investigation for therapeutic purposes. However, Watt's hydro-carbonate constituted a setback in the development of pharmacologically useful gases.Copyright © 2024 International Anesthesia Research Society.

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