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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Donald Eccleston
Donald Eccleston*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, The Royal Victoria Infirmary, Queen Victoria Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4LP, UK
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Extract

It is now over 30 years since Gaddum & Picarelli (1957) described and characterised tryptamine receptors in the periphery. The setting in which they were working was what to us now is an antique department of pharmacology whose most sophisticated equipment was a smoked drum to record the response of a variety of smooth muscle preparations to the extracts of tissue containing the sought after transmitters. Gaddum the Professor of Pharmacology was the ideas man, Crawford a brilliant though highly obsessional methodologist, and Amin an indefatigable Indian PhD student. That group (Amin et al, 1954) described the presence of 5-HT in brain. They had been looking for substance P but the contractile response of the preparations to the extracts of brain did not resemble that peptide but serotonin. In many ways that was an initiator of psychopharmacology which has progressed exponentially to the present day.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 155 , Issue S8: SEROTONIN IN BEHAVIOURAL DISORDERS , December 1989 , pp. 5
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989 

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References

Amin, A. H., Crawford, T. B. B. & Gaddum, J. H. (1954) The distribution of substance P and 5-hydroxytryptamine in the central nervous system of the dog. Journal of Physiology (London), 126, 596–618.Google Scholar
Gaddum, J. H. & Picarelli, Z. P. (1957) Two kinds of tryptamine receptor. British Journal of Pharmacology, 12, 323–328.Google Scholar
Tricklebank, M. D. (1987) Subtypes of 5-HT receptors. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 1, 222–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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