Mickey Finn

By the autumn of 1939, Muller had tested 349 compounds. For his 350th compound, Muller combined the soporific chloral—the active ingredient in Mickey Finn knockout drops—with chlorobenzene and a catalyst, sulfuric acid. His product was dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, later known worldwide as DDT ... 

Marion Friedman. Ft. Col. Theodore E. Woodward, M.C. Maryland Medical Journal. 44, no. 11 (Nov. 1995) 942-943, 977-978. Source for hand-spraying diagram Mickey Finn drops Naples epidemic and Japanese occupation. 

Chloral hydrate, glutethimide, and methaqualone also produce a depressant effect. Chloral hydrate is dangerous to use as an anesthetic, but it has been used to treat persons undergoing withdrawal from heroin, GHB, and alcohol. A mixture of chloral hydrate and alcohol is termed a Mickey Finn and has been used as a date rape drug. 

In the early nineties, Dashiell Hammett created the genre of the hard-boiled . A common occurrence in this literature was a character who slipped someone a Mickey Finn a dose of the sedative known as chloral hydrate dissolved in a drink that contains alcohol. 

Chloral hydrate was widely used as a sleeping medication and anticonvulsant before other drugs became available, but it is not prescribed very often now. — Abusers sometimes combine it with alcohol, thus increasing the depressant effect and resulting in a potentially dangerous knockout potion known as a Mickey Finn. 

Slipping someone a Mickey Finn in their drink in orderto renderthem unconscious was a part of the plot of many film melodramas of the silent era, but it was based on fact. Mickey Finn was the landlord of the Lone Star Saloon on Whiskey Row in Chicago in the 1890s. His patrons often got more than they expected in the form of a few drops of chloral hydrate in their drink. They were then lured by one of Finn s female em-... 

These stability effects are apparent in the equilibrium constants for hydration of ketones and aldehydes. Ketones have values of Keq of about 10-4 to 10-2. For most aldehydes, the equilibrium constant for hydration is close to 1. Formaldehyde, with no alkyl groups bonded to the carbonyl carbon, has a hydration equilibrium constant of about 40. Strongly electron-withdrawing substituents on the alkyl group of a ketone or aldehyde also destabilize the carbonyl group and favor the hydrate. Chloral (trichloroacetaldehyde) has an electron-withdrawing trichloromethyl group that favors the hydrate. Chloral forms a stable, crystalline hydrate that became famous in the movies as knockout drops or a Mickey Finn. 

Chloral hydrate Is the Infamous knock out drops of flgatha Christie or the Mickey Finn of Prohibition gangsters. 

Another downer, chloral hydrate, is the oldest sleeping drug still in medical use. Although rare today, abuse of it was not uncommon in the last century. Slipped into alcoholic drinks, it was the notorious "Mickey Finn" or "knockout drops" used to drug unsuspecting people into unconsciousness in order to rob or shanghai them. 

Chloral hydrate (C2H3C1302) is a drug formerly used as a sedative and hypnotic. It is the compound used to make Mickey Finns in detective stories. 

The compound so formed, chloral hydrate, was discovered by Liebig in 1832 and was introduced as one of the first sedatives and hypnotics (sleep-inducing substances) in 1869. It is now most commonly encountered in detective fiction as a Mickey Finn or knockout drops. ... 

Synonyms Noctec Knockout drops Mickey finn Choral Hydrated choral Chloralex Chloralvan Novochlorhydrate Chloraldural Chloraldurat Tricholralacetaldehyde, hydrated Trichloroethylidene glycol 2,2,2-Trichlorethane-1,1-diol... 

PROBLEM 17.5 Chloral is one of the common names for trichloroethanal. A solution of chloral in water is called chloral hydrate this material has featured prominently in countless detective stories as the notorious "Mickey Finn" knockout drops. Write a structural formula for chloral hydrate. 

Acetaldehyde can be converted into the sedative chloral hydrate (the Mickey Finn or knockout drops often mentioned in detective stories). In the first step of the reaction that forms chloral hydrate, acetaldehyde, CH3CHO, changes to its isomer, CH2CHOH. Draw a reasonable Lewis structures for each of these isomers. 

CHLORAL HYDRATE Knockout drops Mickey Finn... 

Trichloroacetaldehyde has such a large equilibrium constant for its reaction with water that the reaction is essentially irreversible. Therefore, chloral hydrate, the product of the reaction, is one of the few hydrates that can be isolated. Chloral hydrate is a sedative that can be lethal. A cocktail laced with it is commonly known—in detective novels, at least—as a Mickey Finn. Explain the favorable equilibrium constant. 

Other addition reactions of aldehydes oeeur. Water, for example, adds to the earbonyl of trichloroacetaldehyde to form chloral hydrate, a strong hypnotic and sedative known as knock-out drops or (when mixed with alcohol) a Mickey Finn. Complete the reaction by drawing the structural formula of chloral hydrate ... 

With most other aldehydes or ketones, however, the hydrates cannot be isolated because they readily lose water to reform the carbonyl compound that is, the equilibrium constant (Sec. 3.11) is less than 1. An exception is trichloroacetaldehyde (chloral), which forms a stable crystalline hydrate, CCl3CH(OH)2. Chloral hydrate is used in medicine as a sedative and in veterinary medicine as a narcotic and anesthetic for horses, cattle, swine, and poultry. The potent drink known as a Mickey Finn is a combination of alcohol and chloral hydrate. 

Hydrate 41 is stable because there are no a-hydrogen atoms to lose, and the chlorine atoms withdraw electrons from the carbon, which in turn withdraws electrons from the C-0 units. Hydrate 41 is known as chloral hydrate—a white, crystalline solid that was first prepared in 1832. It is a depressant used to induce sleep. This compound is more potent when mixed with alcohol and is a very powerful depressant that has been used as a knockout potion or Mickey Finn. From a structural point of view, it is important to remember that hydrate 41 has no protons on the a-carbon, so enol formation is not possible. 

A solution of chloral, trichloroethanal, in aqueous alcohol is known as knockout drops or a Mickey Finn. The original Mickey Finn was a bartender in Chicago around 1900, who drugged and then robbed his customers. Chloral hydrate has had legitimate uses as an aid to sleep, and in dental anesthesia, and has also been used recreationally. Therapeutic doses of chloral were implicated in the drug overdose death of Anna Nicole Smith in 2007, and Marilyn Monroe was reported to have chloral hydrate in her system when she died. 

Figure 7.33 Top an example of metabolic reduction of a ketone is seen for the narcotic antagonist naloxone. Bottom chloral hydrate (the active ingredient in a "Mickey Finn") exists in equilibrium with trichloroacetaldehyde. Some of this is oxidized to trichloroacetic acid which is not active as a hypnotic agent. The remainder gets metabolically reduced to 1,1,1-trichloroethanol, which is the active sleep-inducing agent.

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