Party Vibe

it was indeed first marketed by Bayer (2 years earlier than that article mentions; most likely tested on the Germans first before everyone else) It was a British chemist who discovered the reaction…

Der englische Chemiker Charles Romley Alder Wright untersuchte 1873 die Reaktionen von Alkaloiden wie Morphin mit Essigsäureanhydrid. Zwanzig Jahre später befasst sich der im Bayer-Stammwerk in Wuppertal-Elberfeld beschäftigte Chemiker und Pharmazeut Felix Hoffmann mit dieser Reaktion, die direkt zu Diacetylmorphin führte. Am 26. Juni 1896 entwickelte Bayer hieraus ein Verfahren zur Synthese von Diacetylmorphin und ließ sich für diesen Pharmawirkstoff den Markennamen “Heroin” schützen.[7]

(aus Wikipedia DE)

DE wikipedia also includes this; omitted from the English translation (curiously LD50s are missing on nearly all chemicals on EN wiki).

21,8 mg·kg−1 (LD50, Maus, i.v.)[3]

Making it less toxic than I had expected – not that I plan starting to use it or feeding it to mice; that is highly illegal across the entire EU. (I suspect though the BND-agents on duty tonight will probably be relieved that „it is only some British Junkies setting off the content-Alarm; at least its not Terrorists”..)

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some Scottish connection somewhere but every source I’ve checked says he was born in Southend on Sea (in East Anglia!) and did the bulk of his experiments in London; although one synthesis was carried out at what I think is now UMIST in Manchester.

I did double check the LD50 value; thinking it was surprisingly high as once you’ve corrected for differing body weight across species; the fatal dose would kill most humans other than long term addicts. Perhaps the mice were Scottish :laugh_at:

I did get a 426 page book of “fun science experiments for young people” the man himself wrote; I can send you a copy of the PDF but beware that if you tried many of them today it is likely NCA + Fire Brigade CBRN alert team would turn up at your lab….

haven’t had a chance to watch the whole lot yet but the first bit (where the Germans experimented on themselves managed to OD on morphine and survived by drinking neat vinegar to make them all vomit) was excellent (did make me think of illiesse and his experiments 😉 )

Professor Wright’s experiment book is here.

Beware: many of the chemicals are now EU / UN redlisted; and many of experiments are genuinely quite dangerous. He does at least include some safety warnings; but bear in mind he only lived to 50 – exposure to some of that stuff has unwanted cumulative effects.

https://archive.org/details/thresholdofscien00wrigrich