Deadly Digitalis - Periodic Table of Videos 

Poisons have a long history of being used for medical treatment. We use opium poppies and cone snail venom for pain relief. We use colchicine for gout. We treat breast cancer with paclitaxel which comes from the Pacific yew tree. We treat acute leukemia with small amounts of arsenic. What makes a poison is the dose.

Foxgloves (Digitalis) are my favourite flowers. I have loads in my garden every year, they grow to around 6ft tall!

Great episode. Been a while since we had Prof. Stockman on here. Took me a moment to recognise him, and found he resembles Daniel Craig enough to allow for the fiction that he is James Bond working as an organic chemist in Q’s laboratory after retiring from active field duty. :)

Always fun to find old chemistry treasures! I've gotten ahold of a few from antique shops

Our school had a speaker give a seminar on digitoxin biosynthesis a few months ago. If I remember correctly, plants have evolved the ability to produce these types of molecules (cardiac glycosides) several times independently.

As a Pharmacy Technician I loved learning about Digoxin... Foxgloves are my fave plant to grow. For those who don't know, 'Digitalis' means 'finger' (ie a digit) and comes from the German for Thimble which the flowers resemble. My professor used to be fond of reminding us of the origins of our modern formulary of medicines and their importance in early 'potions' and the like... it was also his way of berating the ineffectiveness of 'alternative medicines' out there today; "We looked to natural remedies , finding the things that worked and adopting them as medicines ... everything else is just pot-pourri and soup!"🤣

Thank you to everyone on the cast and crew for making these videos.

We were sent a missive if not an epistle from health and safety at Herts County council, informing the school of all the chemicals that under no circumstance were we to have. Chemistry technician checked and found the lot, every single one, starting with the arsenic compounds, right down to thallium. Headmaster, being a chemist of some note, was OK with that, and binned the letter.

I sure love old technology artifacts, use to work as a Biomedical technician in a Hospital and part of the work was supporting the Laboratory department. They had a storeroom containing lots of obsolete laboratory equipment, most of it very old and another room had lots of chemistry containers as at one time the lab technicians use to mix up reagents as part of running tests on patient fluid samples. Anyway one day I was exploring the old storeroom and looking at the chemical bottles and noticed a large glass bottle containing Picric acid which had somewhat dried out over years of storage. Picric acid of course was once used as an explosive however it can be unstable and dangerous, end of story was the lab and surrounding area was evacuated and a bomb disposal team was summoned to attend and remove the Picric acid and destroy it at a gun range, apparently went off with a decent explosion! Sadly a few years ago the old laboratory equipment was removed and destroyed and the old laboratory building was pulled down to make room for a multi level car park.

The rigidity of the steroid structure is in the name, but only incidentally. That "ster" means 'solid: ie. rigid', and that is present in e.g. "stereochemistry". Steroids were named after "cholesterol", which was found in gall stones, which are solid!

More in-depth human biochemistry every now and then would be nice.

I've been watching Periodic Videos since 08. Man I'm so glad when a new video comes on!

Loved this, it's saturated with so much information

William Withering is a really wizard name!

Great to see Rob back on

Metformin comes from a plant, lovastatin comes from red yeast, salicylate is from willows. Most of medicinal chemistry gets its ideas from nature, then we synthetically make them better. E.g. So we acetylate the willow extract to get aspirin

Wonderful video, something in the audio during the initial scene showing the Digitalis sample was absolutely maddening on the ears though. It sounded like there was a high frequency dental drill working right by the microphone.

I was cleaning out a cabinet in a lab and found 2 glass tubes jointed together and held with elastic bands, with what looked like half-melted gold inside. It was around 60 g of cesium, but completely unlabeled. Dealing with that was intersting.

Another Periodic Video - yes!

Great presentation, thank you!

Wonderful program. Thank you and keep it up.

Thanks and happy new year

Really refreshing when one hears the words “I don’t know” from a scientist 🧐.

So in Casino Royale they diagnosed him with tachycardia (fast heart rate) but you mention it causes the heart to pump harder & slower. Is that an inaccuracy on the film's part?

This is one of those moments when I am really glad that I spent all those hours in university and medical school, studying bio chemistry! Fascinating and very useful video demonstration, and explanation of the structure with a 3-D model.

It's fascinating how the various components of the molecule and their spacing and orientations play a part in how the molecule behaves. They're like bumps and grooves on a key Edit: TIL Digoxin is a steroid

These videos are so amazingly interesting. I’ve been watching them for a long time now and I really want to send my thanks to Riley and the University for making them possible.

Great job, Prof. Stockman!

I learned a lot in one episode!

In the Casino Royale clip surely it should say bradycardia if it slows the heart rate?

Great episode, loved it! Mr. Stockman seems to really know his stuff, fascinating!

How exciting would it to be to go through the archives of chemicals!!!

Very nice video. My entire master's research and thesis was over the extraction and quantification of cardenolides from milkweed (Asclepias viridis) leaves.

These videos are much more helpful than my uni courses. Just having their physical model of the molecule structure and seeing the rigidity of the ring back bone and the rotation of the feurone ring makes alot more sense of how chemistry works.

Thanks for the Info

Anyone else notice the "Ohm's Law Pyramid" on the whiteboard? That's an odd thing to find in the Chemistry department.

I didn't realize that the "digitalis" referenced in "Casino Royale" is also foxglove. They talk about foxglove in "No Time to Die". So it's in Daniel Craig's first and last Bond films.

Love these molecular videos!!!!!!!!!!

Love the old bottle with the string tie for the lid.

Very interesting. Thanks

"Purified digoxin is typically used at daily doses of 0.125 to 0.25 mg"

Happy New Year!

The assay for powdered digitalis (in its herbal form) until relatively recently was commonly performed by determining how much digitalis it took to put a set of pigeons into cardiac arrest. Luckily there is an HPLC assay for the pure substance now though.

human heart is almost like a petrol engine, when the heart is weakened, it's behaving like its knocking on low octane fuel but with this medication it would increase the octane level of the fuel. the heart would perform with better pumping rhythm

I looked it up and the LD50 of Digitalis is 28.27 mg/kg

Great video.

I hadn't heard that digoxin shrinks the heart, but if I had to guess, it's actually from left ventricular hypertrophy. Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is what happens when the left ventricle becomes too muscular, usually from long-standing hypertension. In this case, the heart failure isn't because the heart can't squeeze enough. It's because its too muscular, so even when it relaxes, the muscle takes up the space where the blood that should be filling it would go. The "cup" holding the blood is smaller. It still pushes that through your body, but it's not nearly enough. That is opposed to Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). That's when the heart can hold all the blood it wants, but it can't squeeze enough to move it around. I would guess that the digoxin makes the heart too muscular, which leads to HFpEF. That being said, we don't really use digoxin anymore. It has a very narrow therapeutic window, and the side effects can be pretty rough. More importantly, it hasn't been shown to improve mortality. If it's used at all, it's used for people with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) but only to treat symptoms. Source: MD who has been a fan of this channel forever and finally knows what they are talking about.

Id love to see more biochemistry and organic chemistry from this channel. This was cool :D

Thank you for the story! Happy new year too!

As made famous by one of my favourite episodes of Columbo!

i've always had an interest in digitalis and how it works - thanks for the explanation ♥

This man’s knowledge is outstanding. Explains very well and constructive, enjoyed the video!

Very informative video thank you from India 👍👍😍😍

This was used in an episode of Columbo.

@6:11 "and not have all this shi- err... umm.... elaborate shrubbery"

please someone give that guy a new molecule kit, with plenty of parts!

"Elaborate shrubbery"... can't say I've ever heard of that one before, especially when referring to molecular structures :)

Fascinating!

Found it really interesting. Maybe you could do an episode on the basics of molecular shapes and what they are the shapes they are

thanks

Digitalis is the name for one aspect of the enemy in the video game Creeper World 3, and it has a net-like appearance not unlike the molecular model. Today I learned!

i really enjoyed this episode. i love the disection of the parts of the steroid molecule and exolaining their function

Thanks

My thinking is the digitalis molecule is shaped in such a way so as to bind to certain receptors on specific cells. Interfacing these triggers the desired cellular mechanisms.

YASSSSS MORE OLD TIMEY SAMPLES!

Beatiful flowers. I'm a big fan of the digiplexsis (digitalis x isoplexis).

Potion seller, my heart is going into battle, and I need only your strongest potions.

Can you do an episode on warfarin? Pretty sure it's used as both a cardiovascular medicine and as rat poison.

My Cockeral feasted on a foxglove, it became paralysed, I read to infuse it with sodium hydrogen carbonste solution and glucose, I also googled its half life, when it could just walk again and was recovering, it did what a cockeral does and jumped on the back of a hen and nearly passed out again.......The other event we had was when all the chickenns got so pissed on fermenting pear fruit they had to be taken in from blazing sun and given re-hydrate salts.

6:34 "I can't say I know the answer to that" I wish more people would admit that then what is currently acceptable in society today. I came here to see the new video. I left here with a little bit of my faith in science restored.

On the subject of ld50, I've been given a megaphone a few years ago, it was from a protest at Porton down for ld50 animal testing, I don't have any info on the protest itself but its a pretty cool thing to own

Please give a room tour of the professor, I would really like it

A bit unsettling that you find stuff like this

6-6-6 the chemical of the beast! Cool viddy!

Digoxin is also used in the surgical termination of pregnancy as well.

can you guys make a video explaining how to construct the t-s diagram of water for the first time, or any pure compound

Excellent episode. I would like to know more about what he said concerning the stripping of a morphine molecule. Which parts can you remove? Where can I find out more information about this?

I’d like to see a video that includes a synthesis, a simple one, one or two steps, along with appropriate analysis of the starting and end products to show what has been accomplished.

1:37 One thing in organic chemistry that always puzzled me is how the scientists came up with these spatial molecule models. Alright, simple substances like ethanol or acetone should be easy. But this one has 42 carbon atoms - how in the world did they arrange it the way they did, and how did they prove that it's correct?

I take this!

take care with the stuff

How funny to see that bottle. My first job as a chemist was at Lannett.

This is interesting like how did they know back then, that what they were making is a medicine that is still used today?

The ringing noises throughout the first minute were painful

I wish I learn all these in high school.

Hello professors

I'd have liked to have seen an NMR of the sample, it would be interesting to see if it was still pure, can't believe it is.

Nitro-glicerene is also used for some heart issues. Just don't jump up and down after taking the tablets.

Anyone else worried he was going to drop it?

A poison/steroidical substance that give you "harder pumps" *GIMME THAT*

new video!

"We found a vial of potent poison." -Man with a grudge who found two vials of potent poison.

Despite having watched Casino Royale not less than 3 times, I didn't realize Bond was poisoned by digitalis until now XD

Lots of medicines and poisons have that steroidal structure. Seems likely that it is because it can bind to cell walls and then do things to ion channels.

There's some really high pitched noise at the beginning of the video.

I remember the name of the toxin from an episode of The X-Files. I think it was the Eve 6 episode.

The flower looks a lot like Angels trumpet “Devil’s breath”.

6:12 and not have all this shi--- ehm I mean elaborate.....

So how exactly did he figure out the doseage?

They are moving away from using digoxin for heart failure for safer alternatives but it is still used to a small extent