A Molecular Theory of General Anesthesia: Anesthesia is attributed to the formation in the brain of minute hydrate crystals of the clathrate type
- Creators
- Pauling, Linus
Abstract
During the last twenty years much progress has been made in the determination of the molecular structure of living organisms and the understanding of biological phenomena in terms of the structure of molecules and their interaction with one another. The progress that has been made. in the field of molecular biology during this period has related in the main to somatic and genetic aspects of physiology, rather than to psychic. We may now have reached the time when a successful molecular attack on psychobiology, including the nature of encephalonic mechanisms, consciousness, memory, narcosis, sedation, and similar phenomena, can be initiated. As one of the steps in this attack I have formulated a rather detailed theory of general anesthesia, which is described in the following paragraphs (1).
Additional Information
© 1961 American Association for the Advancement of Science. The work reported in this article (contribution No. 2697) is part of a program of investigation of the chemical basis of mental disease supported by grants to the California Institute of Technology made by the Ford Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. This theory has been presented in lectures at Pacific State Hospital, California State Department of Mental Hygiene, Spadra (23 May 1960); at a meeting of the Western Society of University Anesthetists, Stanford Medical School, Palo Alto, Calif. (21 Jan. 1961); at a meeting of the Hawaii section of the American Chemical Society and Sigma Pi Sigma, University of Hawaii, Honolulu (5 Apr. 1961); and at a meeting of the Mediterranean section of the Societe de Chimie Physique, Toulouse, France (25 Apr. 61).Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 62750
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.134.3471.15
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151209-134044539
- Ford Foundation
- NIH
- Created
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2015-12-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field