One of the landmark moments for surgical medicine came with…
One of the landmark moments for surgical medicine came with the discovery in 1942 that a compound from the South American plant called curare (pronounced cure-are-ay) could be used as a supplemental anesthetic. Prior to that, the main types of anesthetics used in surgery were drugs like diethyl ether. For an anesthetic to be effective for surgery, it needs to induce a state of unconsciousness and prevent widespread body movement. The problem with ether was that while a small dose could induce unconsciousness, a much larger dose was required to induce muscle paralysis. Curare is a selective skeletal muscle paralytic. (For exactly this reason, many different indigenous peoples in South America have historically used curare extract to coat arrows and darts for hunting.) Curare — when used in conjunction with ether — allowed surgeons to use smaller doses of ether, making surgeries much safer. Given what you are told here, what kind of drug is curare? alpha-adrenergic antagonist beta-adrenergic antagonist muscarinic antagonist nicotinic antagonist Defend your answer. You will get no partial credit without an explanation.
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