Scrabble Bingo of the Day: EUCAINE

EUCAINE  n pl. -S  an anesthetic

59 points (9 points without the bingo)

The first effective local anesthetic ever was cocaine, obtained from the leaves of the coca plant, and it's still legal for medical use. But cocaine tends to cause intense vasoconstrictor activity and sometimes toxicity in the cardiovascular system. To reap the benefits of cocaine as an anesthetic, less destructive synthesized versions were created, such as amylocaine, benzocaine, procaine, proparacaine, lidocaine, lignocaine, tetracaine, xylocaine and eucaine—a crystalline substance with the formula C15H21NO2.

Today, eucaine is rarely used in humans, except in dentistry. It can produce internal effects that resemble an overdose of cocaine, which must be treated with strong coffee, alcohol, digitalis and strychnine. Eucaine is used more frequently as a local anesthetic in veterinary medicine, because it does not produce primary vasomotor constriction nor vaso-paralytic after effects.

Similar Words: ANESTHETIC(S), BENZOCAINE(S), COCA(S), COCAIN(S), COCAINE(S), LIDOCAINE(S), PROCAINE(S), TETRACAINE(S)

 Eucaine bottles and local anesthetic being applied.
 Photos by Pharmacy and Drugs, Drugstore Museum

 The chemical structure for eucaine.

 Cocaine was used in many things back in the day...
 Photo by KiloByte

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A bingo is when a player empties his or her rack in one turn, placing all seven of their letters on the board to create a word that's at least seven letters long. The term "bingo" is used primarily in the U.S., but elsewhere it's simply known as a "bonus" because you get a bonus of 50 points added to your turn's score. "Scrabble Bingo of the Day" will focus on these high scoring plays, teaching you some interesting and possibly unusual seven-letter or longer words accepted in a game of Scrabble.

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