All articles by Alan Dronsfield – Page 2

  • image - feature dronsfield berthollet box
    Feature

    Who really discovered the Haber process?

    2007-05-01T00:00:00Z

    Although Fritz Haber's name is now attached to the process for the synthesis of ammonia from its constituent elements by using high pressure, who was responsible for this reaction?

  • Image - Phenols-ugr1
    Feature

    Phenols in medicine

    2007-01-01T00:00:00Z

    Phenol encountered in school or college chemistry laboratories demands special respect on account of its toxic and corrosive nature. But phenol and its derivatives do have a few medicinal surprises

  • Cover of The elements of murder: a history of poison
    Review

    Macabre history

    2006-09-01T00:00:00Z

    Alan Dronsfield reviews this grisly chemistry book

  • Chapattis
    Feature

    Chapattis and the English disease

    2006-09-01T00:00:00Z

    In the early 1700s in England 'nothing was so much feared or talk'd of as Rickets among Children'. We now know that this softening of the bones, is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D.

  • Chlorpromazine - unlocked the asylum door for many patients
    Feature

    Chlorpromazine - unlocks the asylum

    2006-05-01T00:00:00Z

    The history of pharmaceuticals is enriched by accounts of drugs developed for one therapeutic purpose that found application in another. This is true for chlorpromazine, a treatment for severe mental illness

  • A chimney sweeper in 1850
    Feature

    Percivall Pott, chimney sweeps and cancer

    2006-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Over 200 years ago, doctor and writer Percivall Pott made the astute connection between soot and scrotal cancer, known then as the chimney sweep's cancer.

  • dronsfield pain image large
    Feature

    Pain relief: from coal tar to paracetamol

    2005-07-01T00:00:00Z

    Analgesics, ie pain-relieving drugs, fall into two categories: those that also reduce body temperature in fevers (antipyretics), and those that act mainly on the brain - typically morphine and diamorphine/heroin. Here we consider members of the first group, particularly those once designated 'coal tar analgesics'. Paracetamol, our most popular over-the-counter pain killer, is one of these.   

  • Figure 1 - Wood's apparatus
    Feature

    The beginnings of Mössbauer spectroscopy

    2002-07-01T00:00:00Z

    In 1958 Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer, aged 29, published the results of an experiment which gave rise to the branch of spectroscopy which now bears his name.