Bovet, << boh VAY, >> Daniel (1907-1992), a Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist, discovered the first antihistamine (drug that relieves the effects of allergic reactions), and developed many similar chemical formulas that provided the basis for modern antihistamines. He also made important discoveries relating to the synthesis of antihistamines and other compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances–especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles. Bovet was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
Bovet later researched drugs that block the action of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine (also called adrenalin and noradrenalin) and thus prevent high blood pressure and contraction of the blood vessels. He also conducted research into lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and similar hallucinogens (substances that induce hallucinations). In 1947, he studied muscle relaxants, hoping to discover a synthetic substitute for curare (a poisonous extract from South American plants, mainly those of the Chondodendron and Strychnos species). Bovet discovered muscle relaxants such as gallamine and succinylcholine. Such chemicals as succinylcholine and curare have since been used, together with light anesthesia, during surgical operations.
Bovet published works on chemotherapy, pharmacology, allergies, the synthesis of antihistamines, and modifications of hormonal equilibrium. Bovet and his wife, Filomena Nitti, were coauthors of The Chemical Structure and Pharmacodynamic Activity of Drugs of the Vegetative Nervous System (1948).
Bovet was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He studied chemistry at the University of Geneva. From 1929 to 1947, he worked in the department of chemical therapeutics at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. He became an Italian citizen in 1949. In 1964, he became professor of pharmacology at the University of Sassari in Italy, and in 1971, he was appointed professor of psychobiology at the University of Rome.
