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Friday, May 16, 2008

Drug question of the day: What is Derbisol? (As asked by the Mrs.)

I wonder how long it would have taken me to answer that question in the days before google. The delinquents were obviously taking a standardized test. Mrs. Lasko told them: "If you've never heard of it, you probably haven't taken it," to which one replied: "I've taken a lot of stuff I've never heard of." Mrs. Lasko then told them the truth, forever messing up all those illicit drug use statistics you hear all the time.

To keep the Thingnamers interested: Derbisol sounds like a fake drug name to me...but that might be because I know all (well maybe not all, but nearly all) real drug names. The biggest problem with the name is that it sounds nothing like a drug of abuse. The -sol suffix is quite popular among hemorrhoid treatments (Proctosol, Anusol) otic treatments (Vosol, Acetasol), and parenteral nutrition (Travasol, Normosol, Hepatasol).

If you're still reading: here's a cool list of fictitious drug names. When I have more time, I'll go through and determine which ones are well named fake drugs.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The "sol" ending references "solution" - though few people know that. It is supposed to indicate a fluid suspension of a colloidal solid in a liquid. In some cases it isn't -sol at all - but -ol instead. In these cases (such as "creosol") it references an alcohol or phenol. It has something to do with an organic compound containing a hydroxyl group or the same linked to a benzene ring. I, however, have no idea what that actually means.