Hippocrates (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC) described several kinds of cancer, referring to them with the Greek word καρκίνος karkinos (crab or crayfish). This name comes from the appearance of the cut surface of a solid malignant tumor, with "the veins stretched on all sides as the animal the crab has its feet, whence it derives its name". Galen stated that "cancer of the breast is so called because of the fancied resemblance to a crab given by the lateral prolongations of the tumor and the adjacent distended veins". : 738  Celsus (c. 25 BC – 50 AD) translated karkinos into the Latin cancer, also meaning crab and recommended surgery as treatment. Galen (2nd century AD) disagreed with the use of surgery and recommended purgatives instead. These recommendations largely stood for 1000 years.In the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, it became acceptable for doctors to dissect bodies to discover the cause of death. The German professor Wilhelm Fabry believed that breast cancer was caused by a milk clot in a mammary duct. The Dutch professor Francois de la Boe Sylvius, a follower of Descartes, believed that all disease was the outcome of chemical processes and that acidic lymph fluid was the cause of cancer. His contemporary Nicolaes Tulp believed that cancer was a poison that slowly spreads and concluded that it was contagious.The physician John Hill described tobacco snuff as the cause of nose cancer in 1761.
For these procedures, the surgical team will bypass the heart with a heart-lung machine and inject potassium chloride into the heart muscle to stop the heartbeat. Side effects
Side effects can include gastrointestinal discomfort, including nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding of the digestive tract. Overdoses cause hyperkalemia, which can lead to paresthesia, cardiac conduction blocks, fibrillation, arrhythmias, and sclerosis.Because of the risk of small-bowel lesions, the US FDA requires some potassium salts containing more than 99 mg (about 1.3 mEq) to be labeled with a warning, while recommending an adult daily intake of 4700 mg (about 63 mEq). History
Slow-K is a 1950s development where the medicine is formulated to enter the bloodstream at delayed intervals. It was first only prescribed to British military forces to balance their diets while serving in Korea. Society
Brand names
Brand names include K-Dur, Klor-Con, Micro-K, Slow-K, Sando-K, and Kaon Cl, most of which are extended release medicine by mouth. Lethal injection
Potassium chloride is used in lethal injection as the third of a three-drug combination. KCl is also sometimes used in fetal intracardiac injections in second- and third-trimester induced abortions. Jack Kevorkians thanatron machine injected a lethal dose of potassium chloride into the patient, which caused the heart to stop functioning, after a sodium thiopental-induced coma was achieved.Cardiac arrest induced by potassium has been used in political assassinations in Iran, by injection or by inserting a potassium suppository into the victims rectum. References
External links
"Potassium chloride". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine.