Skopolamin

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medication that inhibits acetylcholine transmission in the nervous system, used to prevent motion sickness, treat certain eye conditions, and provide sedation
2. A pharmaceutical compound that suppresses nerve impulses by blocking acetylcholine receptors, employed therapeutically for nausea relief and as a pre-operative sedative
3. A tropane alkaloid drug that reduces nerve signal activity through anticholinergic action, applied medically to combat motion sickness and induce drowsiness

Etymology: Scopolamine takes its name from Scopoli, not from any ancient language. In 1786 the Italian-Austrian naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, working in the Carniolan region of what is now Slovenia, described the plant genus "Scopolia," which he named in honour of his own mentor, the Italian naturalist Giovanni Scopoli being the man himself rather than a teacher. The alkaloid was isolated from the plant in 1881 by the chemist Albert Ladenburg, and the drug's name was built on that genus name with the chemical suffix "-in." Scopolamine is a close relative of atropine, found in nightshade-family plants such as henbane and thornapple. Its name therefore records a naturalist's honour rather than a description of the drug's effects, which are sedative, amnesic and anti-nausea, quite different from the poison the plant was feared for in earlier centuries.