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Wednesday, December 11, 2019

The pre-exam cram - Pheno-barbitone in the coffee instead of amphetamine


During our medical student days in the early 1960’s, three months before any exam the 'cram sessions' started. All the time spent on fun and leisure had to be covered up. Lecture notes gone over, textbooks referred, past questions analyzed - it was one big effort. During our third MB exam the following incident took place.
One of our batch mates had a habit of taking strong cups of black coffee, to keep up the night to do his studies. One of his 'friends' at the 'Bloemfonteyn' suggested lacing the coffee with a tablet of amphetamine to keep up the entire night. My batch mate accepted it, eagerly. He was duly given a cup of black coffee with a lot of sugar and a 'tablet of amphetamine'' dissolved in it. A few minutes later he was feeling drowsy and went to sleep. He got up in the morning when the sun was well up. His 'friend' later told him that the 'tablet' dissolved in the cup of coffee was 'pheno-barbitone' a central nervous system sedative and not 'amphetamine' a central nervous system stimulant. Thus my colleague got an unforgettable lesson in pharmacology for the coming exam.

Twelve days of Christmas - song
https://youtu.be/koEwSFVmJSI?t=5

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