Acetylcholine — Current Status in Physiology, Pharmacology and Medicine

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Abstract
IT is now just over half a century since Otto Loewi provided the first conclusive evidence of the humoral, or chemical, transmission of nerve impulses, a concept that had been suggested by DuBois-Reymond nearly half a century previously. Loewi and his associates went on to show that the neurohumoral transmitter in the system he employed, the cardiac vagus of the frog, is acetylcholine (ACh, [CH3]3N+CH2OCOCH3), that an enzyme, subsequently termed cholinesterase, terminates the vagal action by hydrolyzing the transmitter, and that the alkaloidal drug, physostigmine, produces its vagomimetic effect by inhibiting the . . .