Procaine

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Procaine is a local anesthetic drug of the amino ester group. It is used primarily to reduce the pain of intramuscular injection of penicillin, and it is also used in dentistry. Owing to the ubiquity of the trade name Novocain, procaine is sometimes referred to generically as novocaine. It acts mainly by being a sodium channel blocker. Procaine was first synthesized in 1898 and was the first injectable man-made local anesthetic. It was created by the German chemist Alfred Einhorn (1856 1917) who gave the chemical the trade name Novocaine, from the Latin nov- (meaning new) and -caine, a common ending for alkaloids used as anesthetics. It was introduced into medical use by surgeon Heinrich Braun (1862 1934).