Sodium thiopental was discovered in 1932 by Ernest H. Volwiler (1893-1992) and DonaleeL. Tabern (1900-1974) , two scientists on a quest to discover an anesthetic that could be injected directly into the bloodstream. Working for Abbott Laboratories, the pair spent three years screening hundreds of compounds to find one that could produce unconsciousness prior to surgery, with limited side effects.
Sodium thiopental was first tried in humans on March 8, 1934, by Dr. Ralph M. Waters in an investigation of its properties. It was found to induce anesthesia for ten to thirty minutes by depression of the central nervous system within sixty seconds of injection. It was also found to show surprisingly little analgesia. For this reason, it was commonly used to make it easier for doctors to administer longer lasting, inhalable anesthetics after patients had comfortably "gone under." Sodium thiopental was the first general anesthetic to be widely used intravenously and spawned an entirely new family of "short-acting" barbiturate drugs, including Brevital and Surital.
After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, sodium thiopental was associated with a number of anesthetic deaths because excessive doses were given to shocked trauma patients. This resulted in its temporary discontinuation of use as an anesthetic. As with nearly all anesthetic drugs, thiopental causes cardiovascular and respiratory depression resulting in low blood pressure and a reduced rate of respiration.
Later use of sodium thiopental was expanded. The CIA used it as a truth-inducing treatment during interrogations because small doses relaxed patients without producing unconsciousness. Some U.S. states have also used the drug as one of the ingredients in their lethal injection.
