anodyne

[jporter]

Recently, a good friend of mine, a physician, told me of an interesting
experience he'd had. Noticing the rather hostile mood at The Club Pynchon,
of late, I offer you a recounting of this tale, as a little ANODYNE which
you might find SOOTHING. I relate it here in the first person, as he told
it to me:

On Tuesday, I entered one of my examining rooms to find a slim and tanned
senior citizen attired in well worn docksiders, shorts and a non-descript T
shirt. I noticed that his left eye had a slight wince. At first, I thought
I detected slurred speech and my  clinical instincts began clicking in on
what seemed to be a neurological disorder. But as we moved past politeness
and pleasantries, it became clear that a very faint Scandanavian lilt on
top of mild hoarseness had fooled me. The overall effect was that of a more
refined version of the  "burnt out" character from the old tv show: TAXI.
This fellow had been born in the USA, but brought up in Scandanavia.

We were new to eachother. But it was soon evident that on this occassion he
did not want to be examined. Rather, he wanted a refill of an old
prescription for dicyclomine- a fairly innocuous and marginally effective
preparation, "possibly" indicated  to qwell bouts of irritable bowel. He
removed an old empty vial from the pocket of his shorts and handed it to
me.

While not keen on being examined, and offering little in the way of past
medical history, he was willing to tell me "his story." It seems that he
had once been an organic synthesist for ROCHE [which squats in malignant
majesty about two miles to the east] Back in the mid-fifties, he had begun
playing with a group of compounds known as quinazolines, whose constituents
contain six membered rings. He was using synthetic techniques to add
various side chains to these moieties. In those days, he recalled, there
were no Mass Specs or NMRs. Only the primitive UV polarimeter and InfraRed
spectrophotometer, coupled with old fashioned analysis,  were available to
shift through the reaction products- requiring much craft. In
characterizing one of his products he noticed that it did not "fit in" with
the others he had so far produced or predicted.  Further study revealed
that he had created an entity which contained a seven membered ring.

Curious, he sent the new product to pharmacology for activity testing. The
news came back, excitedly: "The mice were made calm, but not unconscious."
This, of course, was LIBRIUM, first of a new pharmacopoeia which would soon
come to be known as The  Benzodiazopines. Within a short time he had
synthesized the whole spectrum, including  their queen: VALIUM.  His name
(along with that of Hoffman La Roche, naturally) sits on the original
patent.

Not only had this man stumbled upon a drug which alone would add billions
to the ROCHE coffers, but, by working backwards from its activity, legions
of neuro-scientists would soon discern the outlines of a whole new level of
brain chemistry with which to tinker: the GABANERGIC system- a virgin
frontier for fun and profit.

I could see there was more to "his story." He held me in the glint of that
wincing gaze, as well as any an ancient mariner, back from the seas of his
youth. But a change had come over him, and he.....

My friend's beeper had gone off, and he trudged to the back of the bar to
make the call. When he returned, he said he had to leave. I haven't spoken
with him since. When I do, I'll ask him what became of that Old Norwegian.
My friend is a good physician, and I've never known him to exaggerate.

jp