
If you have practiced anesthesiology long enough, you should be well acquainted with the pharmacology, utility and reputation of ketamine. This unique anesthetic agent, first synthesized in 1962 and authorized for use in our country in 1970, has earned an unusually notorious reputation among anesthetics, perhaps rivaled only by ether (for its “ether frolics”), propofol (the “Michael Jackson” drug), sodium pentothal (the World War II “truth