science in the 60's, or 'Romeo, we just don't have any chemistry'
Had to look up a paper from 1961 today.
Yes, you heard me, 1961.
And in said paper, buried in the Methods section was the following statement:
"3.92 mg. (chemical name) was dissolved in 10 ml. of 0.05 M Veronal buffer pH 8.15."
Veronal buffer?
What the hell is Veronal buffer?
My knowledge of chemistry being terrible at best, I could not come up with a single idea as to what the hell Veronal buffer could be. I wasn't even sure if 'Veronal' was a chemical term or someone's name. Being an English minor, the only connection I could come up with was Verona, the city in Italy where 'Romeo and Juliet' takes place.
I wondered if perhaps I was supposed to fall desperately in love with my buffer, then commit suicide. (Sadly this joke was lost on the lab personell who were not well-versed in either Shakespeare or Italian cities, but apparently it was an obscure and convoluted joke, even for me.)
Being completely baffled as to what the hell Veronal buffer was, I asked Boss, a chemistry nut who reads the Merck chemical index for fun. (I should mention that he came charging up to lab from Dr. W's wine and cheese yesterday to find the lab copy of the Merck index to settle an argument.) Indeed, we went to the Merck index, even though Boss was reasonably sure he could remember the gist of Veronal (apparently pronounced VEER-ron-nell, like that was supposed to be obvious) buffer.
And boy was it amusing as hell.
Apparently, Veronal is another (possibly archaic) name for a fairly well-known compound, Barbital.
That's right. Barbital as in phenolbarbital and barbituate.
Apparently back in the day (as in 1961) barbitals were used in standard lab buffers and according to Boss, in his early days he worked in labs that had literally gallon jugs of concentrated barbital stock solutions just sitting around in lab, literally kilograms of what is now an arrest-worthy substance. In any case, it's use has been replaced by Tris buffers which we use all the time.
However, the best part of the entry was at the end (since our Merck index is actually from 1989, unlike the paper from 1961):
"Caution: May be habit forming. This is a controlled substance (depressant) listed in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations . . ."
Habit-forming? Really, you think?
On another side note, papers in 1961 also put a period after every single abbreviation for a unit of measurement, such as mg. ml. and L. but not M which was inexplicably italicized. I'm not sure why such conventions were dropped beyond convenience but I wonder if the relaxed standards in punctuation have anything to do with the authors getting addicted to their lab buffers.
Yes, you heard me, 1961.
And in said paper, buried in the Methods section was the following statement:
"3.92 mg. (chemical name) was dissolved in 10 ml. of 0.05 M Veronal buffer pH 8.15."
Veronal buffer?
What the hell is Veronal buffer?
My knowledge of chemistry being terrible at best, I could not come up with a single idea as to what the hell Veronal buffer could be. I wasn't even sure if 'Veronal' was a chemical term or someone's name. Being an English minor, the only connection I could come up with was Verona, the city in Italy where 'Romeo and Juliet' takes place.
I wondered if perhaps I was supposed to fall desperately in love with my buffer, then commit suicide. (Sadly this joke was lost on the lab personell who were not well-versed in either Shakespeare or Italian cities, but apparently it was an obscure and convoluted joke, even for me.)
Being completely baffled as to what the hell Veronal buffer was, I asked Boss, a chemistry nut who reads the Merck chemical index for fun. (I should mention that he came charging up to lab from Dr. W's wine and cheese yesterday to find the lab copy of the Merck index to settle an argument.) Indeed, we went to the Merck index, even though Boss was reasonably sure he could remember the gist of Veronal (apparently pronounced VEER-ron-nell, like that was supposed to be obvious) buffer.
And boy was it amusing as hell.
Apparently, Veronal is another (possibly archaic) name for a fairly well-known compound, Barbital.
That's right. Barbital as in phenolbarbital and barbituate.
Apparently back in the day (as in 1961) barbitals were used in standard lab buffers and according to Boss, in his early days he worked in labs that had literally gallon jugs of concentrated barbital stock solutions just sitting around in lab, literally kilograms of what is now an arrest-worthy substance. In any case, it's use has been replaced by Tris buffers which we use all the time.
However, the best part of the entry was at the end (since our Merck index is actually from 1989, unlike the paper from 1961):
"Caution: May be habit forming. This is a controlled substance (depressant) listed in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations . . ."
Habit-forming? Really, you think?
On another side note, papers in 1961 also put a period after every single abbreviation for a unit of measurement, such as mg. ml. and L. but not M which was inexplicably italicized. I'm not sure why such conventions were dropped beyond convenience but I wonder if the relaxed standards in punctuation have anything to do with the authors getting addicted to their lab buffers.