Barbie?
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From: | RSRICHMOND@aol.com |
To: | histonet@pathology.swmed.edu |
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John Kiernan asks:
>>Barbituric acid, barbiturates and all the other "barbi-" compounds
commemorate "a lady named Barbara" revered and perpetuated by a particularly
perspicacious chemist of the 1890s who recognized an unconventional "acid"
structure. Can anyone remember the clever chemist's name?<<
I heard the "lady named Barbara" story (about Adolf von Baeyer, or perhaps
Emil Fischer) from my organic chemistry professor in 1957, but the following
resource
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/mim/drugs/html/barbiturate_text.htm
tells a fine yarn and suggests that Saint Barbara may be the lady in question.
Saint Barbara was a perhaps legendary saint whose father beheaded her after
she refused to renounce her conversion to Christianity. She is thus always
depicted holding a very large sword. (A sweet Catholic lady named Barbara - a
technologist, but I'll never tell - once told me that she is also depicted
carrying the Holy Sacrament.) Because of the sword, she represents the Yoruba
fightin' god Chango in the Afro-Caribbean (Santero) pantheon.
Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist and omo-Oshun wannabe
Knoxville TN
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