Chloral Hydrate, its danger and its benefits

Chloral hydrate was first synthesized in 1832. Chloral hydrate is the first compound synthesized depressant to help the problem of insomnia patients that has difficult to sleep. Currently, chloral hydrate marketed as a syrup or a capsule in the form of soft gelatin. Chloral hydrate is true in a relatively short time (about 30 minutes) and will lead to sleep in an hour.


Drugs such as anti-depressants chloral hydrate is packaged with a label and given a warning, that the danger of this kind of mixing with alcohol or other sedatives depression. In some cases, a mixture of morphine and alcohol, for example, would make a person experiencing psychosis, and when mixed with penicillin morphine, would constitute a lethal combination suaty and is sometimes used to sedate critically ill patients.

In the nineteenth century, chloral hydrate is often used by alcoholics who experience sleep pattern disturbance due to excessive drinking. Hazards such as a mixture of powerful and properties of highly addictive chloral cause "a craving for one of two passions," as detailed in 1880 in the Quarterly Journal of intoxication. At the end of the century, the medical community finally realized the problems associated with the increasing popularity of hypnotic drugs such as chloral hydrate.

Chloral hydrate, as some nineteenth century depressants, found eager users of the arts community and Victorian English literature. Poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (in picture) became a virtual recluse after his wife Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of Laudanum, and the sadness and guilt cause debilitating addiction chloral hydrate, which lasted until his death in 1882. W.E. Writer Henley's 1875 poem "Interior" of the series "The Hospital," paints a bleak picture about the use of chloral as a sedative agents are often given to dying patients by health care workers.


Apart from the abuse and wrong administration sedative, chloral hydrate did not meet the needs of the drug that will alleviate the trouble sleeping because of pain or insomnia and is considered a positive medical findings. At therapeutic doses (and without the introduction of alcohol and depression), chloral produced some negative side effects and competent in promoting sleep. Although chloral hydrate is still found today, its use has declined with the introduction of other barbiturates.