If you get to know someone who has done a lot of lab work with chemicals, get them to trust you, and then also get them to "in vino veritas" levels of inebriation, they will tell you the open secret which is that consistent compliance with lab safety protocols to the level required to only rarely be exposed to noticeable doses of biologically active substances is so difficult and annoying that few people can sustain it for the long term or actually do it well and reliably enough to prevent that from happening on a fairly frequent basis. Don't tell OSHA! Fortunately, most of those exposures are not the ones OSHA is most worried about, the effects are temporary and mild or benign. Still, if one accepts that as a given, it shouldn't be very surprising that less-than-perfectly-meticulous front-line chemists are going to be your canaries in the coal mine for the discovery of all kinds of substances with unexpectedly interesting properties.
Two other related bits of trivial you might like to add to your essay.
1. Diabetes. The common disease involving failure to regulate blood sugar levels is called "diabetes mellitus" both words originally from Greek, but through Latin. Diabetes literally means "to pass through" but was one of those traditional-world euphemisms (e.g., "make water") for "urinating a lot". Mellitus is from 'mel' for 'honey', which came to mean anything that was "honey sweet" (For example, in the Odyssey, there was some controversy over whether "honey-sweet" is used to describe something that is already sweet, or whether it referred to something that was "sweetened by adding honey".) In 1675 the English physician Thomas WIllis added the "mellitus", because the way doctors would make certain diagnoses was literally to taste urine, and sweet urine, "glycosuria" was a defining symptom of this particular kind of urination-problem disease.
2. Synsepalum dulcificum, the "miracle berry" makes the glycoprotein "miraculin" which binds to sweetness receptors in a way so as to make highly acidic substances taste sweet instead of sour. You can buy pressed tabled of dried berry cheap on Amazon, and after it works on your tongue, you can bite into raw lemons or limes or softened tart rhubarb and, without having added any sugar, they taste sweet as candy. It makes for a fun party.
If you get to know someone who has done a lot of lab work with chemicals, get them to trust you, and then also get them to "in vino veritas" levels of inebriation, they will tell you the open secret which is that consistent compliance with lab safety protocols to the level required to only rarely be exposed to noticeable doses of biologically active substances is so difficult and annoying that few people can sustain it for the long term or actually do it well and reliably enough to prevent that from happening on a fairly frequent basis. Don't tell OSHA! Fortunately, most of those exposures are not the ones OSHA is most worried about, the effects are temporary and mild or benign. Still, if one accepts that as a given, it shouldn't be very surprising that less-than-perfectly-meticulous front-line chemists are going to be your canaries in the coal mine for the discovery of all kinds of substances with unexpectedly interesting properties.
Two other related bits of trivial you might like to add to your essay.
1. Diabetes. The common disease involving failure to regulate blood sugar levels is called "diabetes mellitus" both words originally from Greek, but through Latin. Diabetes literally means "to pass through" but was one of those traditional-world euphemisms (e.g., "make water") for "urinating a lot". Mellitus is from 'mel' for 'honey', which came to mean anything that was "honey sweet" (For example, in the Odyssey, there was some controversy over whether "honey-sweet" is used to describe something that is already sweet, or whether it referred to something that was "sweetened by adding honey".) In 1675 the English physician Thomas WIllis added the "mellitus", because the way doctors would make certain diagnoses was literally to taste urine, and sweet urine, "glycosuria" was a defining symptom of this particular kind of urination-problem disease.
2. Synsepalum dulcificum, the "miracle berry" makes the glycoprotein "miraculin" which binds to sweetness receptors in a way so as to make highly acidic substances taste sweet instead of sour. You can buy pressed tabled of dried berry cheap on Amazon, and after it works on your tongue, you can bite into raw lemons or limes or softened tart rhubarb and, without having added any sugar, they taste sweet as candy. It makes for a fun party.
This is a stellar essay, thank you! I wonder if you have more thoughts on epistemology/ethnomethodology/etc of chemistry.
Fascinating read, thank you!
I’m curious, what specifically did you search for and on what search engines when you looked for sweet taste reports? Did you look for other tastes?