Pain Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines


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In 1815, with Europe at war,

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four young Germans decided to do a particularly foolhardy experiment.

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One which would transform their lives and ours, as well.

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One of them, a pharmacist, had created some intriguing crystals

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which he carefully measured out.

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He was keen to see what effects they would have on his body.

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He dissolved them in alcohol and then diluted it with water.

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Since the crystals had recently been made

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and only previously tested on dogs,

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they had very little idea what was going to happen.

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The answer was, not much. So they did it again.

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Prost!

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Ah!

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This time, there was a pounding headache,

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nausea and extreme flushing.

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So, naturally, they decided to go even more extreme.

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They put the crystals directly on their tongues

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and washed them down with another shot of alcohol.

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Their leader, Friedrich Serturner,

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described falling to the ground semiconscious.

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In terrible pain and fingers twitching with every heartbeat.

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Somehow, he managed to crawl his way

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over to a bottle of really strong vinegar.

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He swallowed it down and the rest,

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he poured into the mouths of his unconscious assistants.

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They were all violently sick.

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Serturner had saved their lives by making them vomit,

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but he noted that for the next few days,

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they continued feeling ill. Aches, sickness and constipation.

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Swallowing the crystals had produced classic symptoms of opium overdose.

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Serturner was thrilled.

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He was the first person ever to extract the essence of opium.

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A white powder that he called morphium.

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He had given birth to a whole new science

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and opened a Pandora's box of good and evil.

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This series tells the extraordinary story of what Serturner unleashed.

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The remarkable medicines which today protect us

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against devastating disease.

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Just over there is a monster of biblical proportions.

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The smallpox virus.

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And the agonies of mortal life.

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I have here a big lump of raw opium.

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You almost want to lick it.

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Drugs that can be terrifyingly lethal.

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This is THE most poisonous substance known to man.

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Or incredibly pleasurable.

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Ooo, yes!

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Blimey, wow!

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HE LAUGHS

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It's a story of two centuries of greed, luck and genius.

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In this programme, I'm going to be telling the remarkable

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stories of the men who abolished pain.

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And by doing so created the world's most popular, desirable

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and addictive drugs.

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This is such an odd and unnatural thing to do.

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I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do it, but let's see.

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POUNDING HEARTBEAT

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OK.

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Argh! Cor! That is just absolutely horrible!

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I'm pushing a needle right through my hand.

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I don't know if it's got through the other end. Sticking out there.

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Ah!

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This is only possible

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because my hand has been numbed with local anaesthetic.

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The fact that I can do that is a testimony,

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if you like, to modern medicine.

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200 years ago, we had almost nothing.

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We had a few herbal medicines.

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If you were having your teeth pulled out or your leg cut off,

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then you were going to be in an awful lot of pain.

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Pain is such a visceral thing that it's not surprising

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that the quest to find a way to control it

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has been such a driving force in the history of drugs.

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For centuries, there was only one substance

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that could reliably relieve pain. Opium.

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A resin extracted from poppies,

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it is one of mankind's oldest and most addictive drugs.

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Yet opium would give rise to today's giant pharmaceutical industry.

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Opium's always been popular.

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It's always been very easy to tell what opium does

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because it acts in a very obvious way. It acts very quickly.

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The Sumerians called it the Joy Plant.

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By the beginning of the 19th century,

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opium was widely available in Europe.

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It was particularly popular when dissolved in alcohol,

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as a medicine called laudanum.

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The trouble is, the raw material was expensive and it was unreliable.

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So no wonder pharmacists began to ask themselves,

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"What exactly is in opium that gives it its seemingly-magical qualities?"

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One of those pharmacists was

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the 20-year-old German Friedrich Serturner,

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whose attempts to produce morphium nearly ended in his death

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and the death of all his assistants.

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His experiments would unlock the key, not just to pain relief,

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but to all modern medicines.

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It took Serturner two years of trial and painful error

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before he discovered how to extract morphium from opium resin.

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I'm hoping to do it in rather less time than that.

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But because morphium is now a Class A drug,

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I'm going to have to do it in a licensed premises.

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Serturner would have started with raw opium

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which comes from the sap of the poppy.

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Now, I have an enormous great block of the stuff here.

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It still smells sort of yeasty.

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Time to extract morphium.

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First, Serturner added a standard solvent. Alcohol.

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The alcohol should already be beginning to extract

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the chemicals from the raw opium.

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This, in essence, is laudanum.

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A sort of tonic they used in the 19th century.

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They gave it to squawking babies.

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One of the ideas which actually comes from alchemy

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is the idea that there might be some active principle.

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Something that lay at the heart of your substance

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which gave it its power.

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And from there, it's actually not a huge step to say,

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what if we take away the alcohol, what are we left with?

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Are we left with that fundamental principle?

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The first thing he extracted was a substance that was acidic.

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He tried it on dogs and absolutely nothing happened.

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Instead of giving up, Serturner tried doing something

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no-one else had previously attempted.

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The received wisdom was the only really important

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chemicals in plants were sharp-tasting acids.

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But Serturner decided to see if he could extract an alkaline chemical,

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the opposite of an acid, from opium.

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He was exploring the unknown.

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When you actually try and do it with modern equipment,

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it gives you a huge respect for what they were doing back then.

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Because every stage would last weeks

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and he obviously had no real idea what he was doing.

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Finally, around 1803, he got this sludgy precipitate.

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From this very unpromising substance,

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Serturner managed to extract some white crystals.

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When he gave these to a dog,

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the dog became sleepy, trembled and then died.

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Serturner was absolutely thrilled.

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He published and sat back, waiting for the applause.

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Which never came.

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It seems people just weren't that interested

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in the workings of a young man doing his bit in a small back room.

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It was not until 10 years later,

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when Serturner purified and took the morphium himself,

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with his three assistants,

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that his dramatic discovery

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finally caught the attention of early chemists.

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Gay-Lussac, who was a doyenne of chemistry in Paris,

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probably the greatest chemist in the world of his day,

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he decided that this paper that had been brought to his attention

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should be translated into French and published.

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And, therefore, it went around the world.

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And the world knew about this isolation. That was so important.

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In extracting the active ingredient of opium,

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Serturner had launched a new age of discovery.

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He had shown that the powers of herbal remedies

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could be captured in a chemical form,

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measured out and quantified as a dose.

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He had also revealed a whole new world

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of previously-unsuspected chemicals hiding in plants.

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They were to become our first real medicines.

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They decided to call these new chemicals

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they were getting out of plants the alkaloids.

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They also decided to give them the name "-ine" at the end.

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And, so, Serturner's white powder

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became not "morphium", but "morphine".

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The isolation of morphine was the single most important event

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that has ever occurred in drug discovery.

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Far more important than the introduction of penicillin

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in terms of advancing the science.

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The extraction of morphine

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was such a big moment in the history of medicine

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because once you had the pure chemical,

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you could give it in a controlled and measured dose.

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You were no longer dependent on the vagaries

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of whatever plant you happened to be eating.

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It also meant they could extract dozens of different alkaloids.

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Nature's medicine cabinet was flung wide open.

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It turned out that alkaloids are the reason

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why many herbal remedies are effective.

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Being the plant's own defence against herbivores,

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a lot were bitter-tasting and poisonous.

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But once isolated, we could start to use them.

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And not just as painkillers.

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Now, I have here my favourite drug of abuse. Caffeine.

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Other famous alkaloids include nicotine

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and the malaria drug, quinine.

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And here's another I take from time to time.

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Codeine was another powerful painkiller

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which was extracted from the poppy.

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Codeine, like morphine,

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works by modulating the way that the brain perceives pain.

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Surprisingly, we are only now beginning to understand

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how these so-called opiate drugs work.

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Normally, raw nerve endings trigger an electrical signal

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which travels to the spine.

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There, it's converted into a chemical signal

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which crosses into other nerves

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which then transmit the message to the brain.

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Once your brain has received that pain message,

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it can decide to tone it down or, indeed, switch it off entirely.

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It does that via another set of nerves

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that send a signal down the spine.

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And that interrupts the incoming pain message.

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Our brains typically activate this pain-relieving pathway

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in times of extreme stress.

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There are a number of different points along the pain pathway

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where you can turn the pain response down.

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And the opiates interact with quite a few of them.

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For example, they make the brain switch on

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the pain-blocking pathways I've just described.

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They also act in the brain

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to reduce the impact of any pain messages that get through.

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There's even recent evidence

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they can dull the raw nerve endings at the site of pain.

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It's no wonder they're so effective.

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The opiates are wonderful painkillers,

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but they do have significant side effects.

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Constipation, vomiting,

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addiction, and if they depress your breathing, death.

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Plants from all over the world were soon being examined

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for alkaloids that might rival the opiates.

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One plant from South America did indeed contain a substance

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with extraordinary pain-killing properties.

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But, like morphine, it came with a heavy price.

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This white powder is an alkaloid extracted from these leaves.

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And these are the coca leaves.

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They're a well-known stimulant in South America.

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Which means that this is coca-ine.

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Better known as cocaine.

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Cocaine was added to wines, which were promoted by the Pope.

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Soft drinks, for those who disapproved of alcohol,

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and soothing drops and lozenges.

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But it was cocaine's reputation for combating hunger and fatigue

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that led a curious Austrian doctor called Sigmund Freud

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to investigate its effects further.

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Sigmund Freud was then a neurologist in Vienna.

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This was well before he developed psychoanalysis.

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And he got extremely interested in cocaine,

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which he called a magical drug,

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which he prescribed to his patients for a whole range of ailments,

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including, ironically enough, morphine addiction.

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He sent samples of cocaine to a number of his colleagues,

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including a trainee eye surgeon called Karl Koller.

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Koller had been using morphine and other substances

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to try and alleviate the searing agony of eye surgery.

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But nothing had worked.

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Koller tasted some cocaine

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and he noticed that the tip of his tongue went numb.

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And he thought to himself, "That's interesting.

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"What would happen if I put cocaine into my eye?"

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Well, he tried it out on a frog and a dog

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and they seemed to be fine,

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so he then decided to try it out on himself.

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What he did, he and a colleague,

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is they got cocaine dissolved in water

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and they dripped some into their eyes...

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Oh, that stings a bit.

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And then they got a nice sharp pin

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and they sort of stabbed their own eyes.

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Now, I'm not going to do that, it sounds insanely dangerous.

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I'm going to use this instead.

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Oh, that's weird. I could just about see it bend then.

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Totally numb.

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This was extraordinary.

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Whereas the opiates numbed pain,

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cocaine is what we now call an anaesthetic,

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which literally means, without sensation.

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Cocaine stops nerves from firing, from sending signals.

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And affects not just the pain-detecting nerves,

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but all of them.

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Which is why it makes the eye or tongue feel completely numb.

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Cocaine made complicated eye surgery possible.

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This stomach-churning footage from 1917

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shows a cataract operation

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performed after putting in a few drops of cocaine.

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It would once have been attempted without pain relief.

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When cocaine gets to the blood and to the brain,

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there it acts very like the opiates.

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And that means it can be a drug of abuse.

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It's not very much used these days, but its derivates certainly are.

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They form the basis of many local anaesthetics.

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And as somebody who's had their teeth drilled

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more times than I care to remember,

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I'm hugely grateful to Dr Koller.

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Or Coca Koller, as he was sometimes called.

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But plants could not provide the level of general anaesthesia

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required to make extensive pain-free surgery possible.

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In the good old days, patients weren't even allowed opium

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because pain was thought to be good for you.

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Pain was understood as an essential component in terms of surgery.

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So although surgeons were concerned about the effects of pain

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on patients in terms of bearability,

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in terms of keeping a patient alive during an operation,

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it was regarded as part of the package.

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The world where surgeons in frockcoats

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committed acts of unspeakable horror

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would be changed by a dentist's chance discovery.

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But it was a breakthrough that was a long time coming.

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Throughout the 18th century, chemists had been experimenting

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with everything they could lay their hands on, from plants to rocks.

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They were particularly interested in creating gasses.

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One of the gasses they produced,

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they did by heating up ammonium nitrate.

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Now, this gas was said to be incredibly poisonous.

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So, surprising that a young chemist called Humphry Davy

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was so keen not just to collect it, but also inhale it.

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It's very hard, I think,

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to get back into the heads of an 18th or 19th-century chemist.

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And that's partly because

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there was so much self-experimentation that went on.

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Now, gasses, you inhaled them,

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and these "airs", as they're called,

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were at one point regarded as possibly panaceas,

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solutions for big medical problems.

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And the way in which they tested them was on themselves.

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The young Humphry Davy was desperate to make his name,

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which is probably why, despite the risks,

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he experimented with this new, potentially-lethal gas.

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It was a foolhardy thing to do.

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I'm doing it under carefully-controlled conditions.

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Ooo!

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Nothing yet. Ho! Huh! OK.

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Now, he records...in his diaries

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that he started off feeling

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sort of sleepy and splenic.

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But after a couple of... Oooh! ..blasts of it,

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he started to want to dance around the room.

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Ooo, yes, I'm feeling it now. Yes.

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Huh! Light-headed.

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HE LAUGHS

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Yep, I can see why they call it laughing gas.

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He also wrote other things...

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which I've entirely forgotten now.

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Er...his notebooks.

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Yes, he was writing something about... Oooh, yeah! So it goes...

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Now, one of the things he noticed and wrote about,

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not in his notebooks, later,

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is its effects on pain, that apparently it reduced it.

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Ooo! Yeah. That's actually all right.

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HE LAUGHS

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Davy published his discovery that nitrous oxide relieved pain

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and even stated its potential in surgery.

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And yet, tragically, he did nothing more about it.

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For the next few decades,

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surgeons went on operating on fully-conscious patients

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and nitrous oxide was used mainly as a recreational drug

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for laughing gas parties.

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It was at one of these in America

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that a young dentist called Horace Wells came across the gas

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and saw how effective it was at dulling pain.

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Because his days were spent yanking out teeth,

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it made a deep impression.

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He was horrified by pain. And there was nothing new about that.

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That surgeons, often the most brilliant surgeons,

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were repulsed by what they had to do.

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If you had to operate on someone,

0:21:200:21:21

if you had to cut into them without anaesthetics,

0:21:210:21:24

it was an awful thing.

0:21:240:21:26

They would vomit with fear

0:21:260:21:28

and revulsion prior to doing an operation.

0:21:280:21:31

After experimenting first on himself and then on some patients,

0:21:340:21:39

Wells realised he had stumbled across something truly miraculous.

0:21:390:21:42

A gas that could open the way to pain-free surgery.

0:21:420:21:46

So, he headed to Harvard Medical School in Boston

0:21:460:21:50

to tell the elite surgeons what he had found.

0:21:500:21:53

He invited a former partner of his, William Morton,

0:21:540:21:58

who was also studying at the medical school,

0:21:580:22:01

to accompany him and share his triumph.

0:22:010:22:03

On a cold winter's night in 1845,

0:22:070:22:09

Wells and Morton appeared before a packed audience

0:22:090:22:13

of doctors and medical students.

0:22:130:22:16

One of the medical students had a problem with his teeth,

0:22:160:22:19

so he was summoned forward,

0:22:190:22:20

he was given a good old blast of nitrous oxide

0:22:200:22:24

from a bag that Wells had brought with him

0:22:240:22:26

and then Wells attempted to extract

0:22:260:22:29

his painful tooth with a pair of pliers.

0:22:290:22:31

No-one's entirely clear what happened next,

0:22:310:22:34

but the student made a noise,

0:22:340:22:36

the audience interpreted that as a cry of pain

0:22:360:22:39

and soon, there were hisses and cries of, "Humbug! Humbug!"

0:22:390:22:44

Which was a deadly medical insult.

0:22:440:22:47

Utterly humiliated, Morton and Wells packed their bags and they left.

0:22:470:22:53

No-one had imagined anaesthesia could exist.

0:23:020:23:05

And I think that's why Wells failed

0:23:050:23:07

in his demonstration of nitrous oxide.

0:23:070:23:10

Because they found the very idea that pain was optional,

0:23:100:23:13

that pain could be deleted, erased from the world,

0:23:130:23:16

so intrinsically fraudulent

0:23:160:23:18

that they were predisposed to reach that conclusion.

0:23:180:23:21

Wells was broken by this failure and would later commit suicide.

0:23:230:23:27

But Morton had seen the commercial potential.

0:23:270:23:31

His real motivation for trying to find

0:23:310:23:34

a decent method of pain relief for dental work

0:23:340:23:36

was actually to find a way of expanding his business.

0:23:360:23:40

Because by that stage,

0:23:400:23:42

new technology produced sets of artificial teeth.

0:23:420:23:46

So, rather than just individual teeth,

0:23:460:23:49

a patient could have a whole set fitted.

0:23:490:23:52

But obviously, to have rotten stumps and roots extracted

0:23:520:23:55

without pain relief was extremely painful

0:23:550:23:59

and a lot of patients did not stick it.

0:23:590:24:02

Morton turned his attention to another substance

0:24:050:24:08

doing the rounds at student parties.

0:24:080:24:10

By adding alcohol to sulphuric acid,

0:24:110:24:14

the students produced a volatile liquid

0:24:140:24:16

known as, sweet oil of vitriol.

0:24:160:24:19

When inhaled, it resulted in a very decent high.

0:24:190:24:22

Whoo! This is strong stuff.

0:24:240:24:25

What is coming out of this

0:24:250:24:27

is a vapour or a liquid that we now know as ether.

0:24:270:24:31

Ether was a popular alternative to alcohol for teetotallers.

0:24:350:24:39

It was sometimes used in pain-relieving medicines.

0:24:390:24:42

And it was this pain-killing effect that got Morton interested.

0:24:420:24:46

Morton started out by using a few drops of ether to numb the mouth.

0:24:500:24:55

Then he used quite a lot to knock out a spaniel.

0:24:550:24:59

But what he really needed to do to prove it was safe and effective

0:24:590:25:02

was try it on a human.

0:25:020:25:04

With no other human volunteers to hand,

0:25:060:25:08

Morton decided to try it out on himself.

0:25:080:25:11

He got a handkerchief,

0:25:110:25:13

and applied some ether.

0:25:130:25:15

He looked at his watch.

0:25:170:25:19

And then stuck the handkerchief over his face.

0:25:190:25:22

A few minutes later, he woke up.

0:25:270:25:29

But he was unable to move.

0:25:290:25:31

As he later wrote, "I was terrified that I would die in that position.

0:25:310:25:36

"And the world would laugh at my folly."

0:25:360:25:38

But the world never got a chance because he made a full recovery,

0:25:380:25:42

and he was now very, very keen to try this out on someone else.

0:25:420:25:46

After successful trials on unsuspecting patients,

0:25:520:25:56

Morton returned to Harvard Medical School.

0:25:560:25:58

They agreed that Morton should have a second chance

0:26:000:26:03

to demonstrate pain relief, in the daunting domed surgical theatre

0:26:030:26:07

at Massachusetts General Hospital.

0:26:070:26:11

The date was set for October 16th, 1846 -

0:26:110:26:15

just 16 days' time.

0:26:150:26:17

On that Friday, this room would have been absolutely packed

0:26:200:26:23

with medical folk,

0:26:230:26:25

many of them expecting, and some of them hoping,

0:26:250:26:27

that the uppity dentist would fail. Again.

0:26:270:26:31

An eminent and extremely sceptical surgeon had been

0:26:330:26:36

booked for the operation.

0:26:360:26:37

At 10am, the appointed hour, there was no sign of Morton,

0:26:390:26:43

so the surgeon prepared to operate.

0:26:430:26:45

His patient was a young man with an enormous tumour on his neck.

0:26:450:26:48

He would have been strapped down because he was going to be awake

0:26:480:26:52

and screaming throughout.

0:26:520:26:54

But before the surgeon could apply his scalpel to the quivering flesh,

0:26:540:26:59

Morton came bursting into the room.

0:26:590:27:02

He was carrying this.

0:27:020:27:04

It's an ether inhaler and he'd had it built overnight.

0:27:040:27:08

No time at all to test it so he must have been feeling almost

0:27:080:27:11

as anxious as the patient because he had no idea if it was going to work.

0:27:110:27:15

Filling the inhaler with ether, Morton handed it to the patient.

0:27:170:27:22

He was relying on a complicated and untested system of valves

0:27:220:27:26

to give the right dose.

0:27:260:27:27

His future depended on this test succeeding -

0:27:280:27:32

the Boston surgeons would not give him another chance.

0:27:320:27:35

When the patient reported feeling a little bit groggy,

0:27:370:27:40

Morton took it back, and then he turned to the surgeon and said,

0:27:400:27:45

"Sir, your patient is ready."

0:27:450:27:48

They were used to operating on people who were screaming

0:27:510:27:54

and trying to get off the table.

0:27:540:27:57

So, anything that held you on the table, even if

0:27:570:27:59

you waved your arms and legs around a bit while it was going on,

0:27:590:28:03

that was preferable to you being wide awake.

0:28:030:28:07

So, the surgeon picked up his scalpel and he started to cut.

0:28:070:28:11

From the patient there came not a sound.

0:28:110:28:14

The operation was long and complicated, but also successful.

0:28:140:28:18

At the end, the patient reported that he had felt no more than a scratch.

0:28:180:28:23

This was an extraordinary moment in the history of surgery -

0:28:230:28:26

an operation performed without pain.

0:28:260:28:29

At the end, the surgeon turned to the audience and he said,

0:28:290:28:33

"Gentlemen, THIS is no humbug."

0:28:330:28:35

There's a wonderful letter from a professor at Harvard to Morton

0:28:390:28:43

saying, "Everyone will want a share of your great discovery.

0:28:430:28:47

"I'm not trying to take a share but we do need to give it a name.

0:28:470:28:50

"I would suggest the name 'anaesthesia'.

0:28:500:28:53

"And we need to give it a name

0:28:530:28:54

"because everyone throughout the world, for the rest of human history,

0:28:540:28:59

"will need to talk about what's just happened and what this is."

0:28:590:29:01

News spread about ether around the world within six months,

0:29:060:29:10

which, given the communications network at the time, I think,

0:29:100:29:14

was highly significant.

0:29:140:29:17

What anaesthesia does is act as a bit of a watershed

0:29:170:29:20

and the ripples sort of permeate out through society.

0:29:200:29:24

And there are lots of wider humanitarian movements

0:29:240:29:27

like the anti-slavery movement, the reform of prisons.

0:29:270:29:32

You just get the general sense that patients'

0:29:320:29:34

and social tolerance of pain is decreasing.

0:29:340:29:39

Pain was no longer an expected and tolerated part of everyday life.

0:29:430:29:48

It was now something that could - and should - be minimised.

0:29:480:29:51

In the 50 years since Serturner's isolation of morphine,

0:29:540:29:58

the rush of scientific discoveries had replaced old superstitions

0:29:580:30:02

and beliefs with new knowledge.

0:30:020:30:04

This would set researchers off hunting for pain-killing drugs

0:30:060:30:09

in some very unlikely places.

0:30:090:30:12

By the middle of the 19th century, the mysterious world of herbs

0:30:160:30:20

and tinctures was being replaced by white powders.

0:30:200:30:25

And these, thanks to this invention,

0:30:250:30:28

were in turn being replaced by...

0:30:280:30:32

..tablets.

0:30:370:30:38

We're about to enter the era where chemists could mass-produce

0:30:380:30:41

the sort of painkillers that we now routinely use every day.

0:30:410:30:45

They were also about to create one of the most addictive

0:30:470:30:50

substances known to man.

0:30:500:30:52

And it all began with this stuff.

0:30:520:30:56

Coal tar.

0:30:560:30:57

Coal tar was a waste product of the burgeoning coal/gas industry.

0:30:590:31:03

And, naturally, chemists tried to find profitable uses for it.

0:31:030:31:06

The availability of coal tar suddenly gives you an enormous new

0:31:080:31:12

library of starting materials.

0:31:120:31:16

And by then chemistry was really taking off - the connectivity,

0:31:160:31:20

the structures, were known.

0:31:200:31:21

And it was suddenly realised that you might be able to made

0:31:210:31:25

either the natural parts themselves or things which mimic them.

0:31:250:31:29

That was a tremendous... A real sea change in chemistry.

0:31:290:31:33

This sea change in chemistry started as it was to proceed -

0:31:360:31:39

with a series of mistakes.

0:31:390:31:42

In 1845, an 18-year-old British chemist tried using coal tar

0:31:420:31:46

to make quinine, a malaria drug.

0:31:460:31:49

Instead, he created the first artificial dye, mauve,

0:31:490:31:53

and made a fortune.

0:31:530:31:55

Coal tar was clearly worth studying,

0:31:550:31:57

yet it would take another accident

0:31:570:32:00

to unlock it's pain-killing potential.

0:32:000:32:02

In this case, a giant cock up involving two French doctors,

0:32:020:32:06

Arnold Cahn and Paul Hepp,

0:32:060:32:08

who were working here at the University of Strasbourg.

0:32:080:32:12

They were testing chemicals derived from coal tar,

0:32:120:32:16

which they were testing on patients with intestinal worms.

0:32:160:32:19

Coal tar had been shown to have antiseptic properties

0:32:210:32:24

when used on skin.

0:32:240:32:26

So, naturally enough, they wanted to see what effects

0:32:260:32:29

some of its derivatives had inside the body.

0:32:290:32:32

Fortunately, they had ready supply of patients.

0:32:320:32:36

These were the days when doctors were quite happy to try out

0:32:360:32:38

almost anything on anybody.

0:32:380:32:40

But even, so I'm amazed they managed to get patients to eat this stuff.

0:32:400:32:45

It is incredibly pungent.

0:32:450:32:47

It is naphthalene, the stuff they use these days in mothballs.

0:32:470:32:52

It did no harm to worms.

0:32:520:32:54

But it did seem to have an effect.

0:32:540:32:57

Amazingly enough, one of their patients who had a fever,

0:32:570:33:00

reported that his fever went down after he'd eaten this stuff.

0:33:000:33:04

That was great news.

0:33:040:33:05

Followed soon afterwards by really bad news - there had been a mix up.

0:33:050:33:09

Whatever the patient had been eating, it wasn't naphthalene.

0:33:090:33:12

The pharmacy here had made a terrible mistake with the labelling.

0:33:140:33:17

The patient had actually been a completely unknown chemical.

0:33:180:33:22

It turned out that the chemical that the pharmacist had been

0:33:250:33:27

accidentally dispensing was this one. Acetanilide.

0:33:270:33:32

Now, who knows how it got here,

0:33:320:33:34

but it's actually used in the dye industry.

0:33:340:33:36

But it was a most fortuitous accident.

0:33:360:33:39

They could have killed the man, but instead acid aniline,

0:33:410:33:44

yet another chemical derived from coal tar,

0:33:440:33:47

was quickly marketed as a profitable fever-reducing drug.

0:33:470:33:51

And not surprising Cahn and Hepp went on to make a fortune.

0:33:530:33:58

But the really significant thing about this discovery

0:33:580:34:01

is what happened next, in Germany.

0:34:010:34:03

There was huge demand for the new headache powders,

0:34:110:34:14

and, clearly, a fortune to be made by anyone who could come up with

0:34:140:34:18

an even better drug.

0:34:180:34:20

Well, here at the Bayer Dye Works there was a young

0:34:200:34:23

and ambitious chemist called Carl Duisberg,

0:34:230:34:26

who decided he would give it a go.

0:34:260:34:28

Bayer's cellars were full of coal tar chemicals like acetanilide.

0:34:300:34:35

And Duisberg set out to see which he could convert into drugs.

0:34:350:34:38

His first discovery, called phenacetin, was very successful.

0:34:400:34:44

We now know that, like acetanilide,

0:34:440:34:47

it's converted in the body to paracetamol.

0:34:470:34:50

Bayer's factory here grew rapidly on the profits.

0:34:520:34:55

And so did their ambitions.

0:34:550:34:57

Another substance they got really interested in was salicylic acid.

0:34:580:35:03

Now, because it's derived from coal tar,

0:35:030:35:05

they thought originally maybe it's an antiseptic.

0:35:050:35:08

They rubbed it on the skin and swallowed it.

0:35:080:35:11

Unfortunately, it didn't kill bugs like typhoid.

0:35:110:35:15

But what it did do, if you had a fever, is it brought it down.

0:35:150:35:18

And it certainly made you feel better.

0:35:180:35:21

Salicylic acid was effective.

0:35:220:35:24

But it was harsh on the stomach.

0:35:240:35:27

We use it now to burn off warts.

0:35:270:35:31

At Bayer's new drug department, a research chemist, Arthur Eichengrun

0:35:310:35:36

thought he could see a way of changing the molecules,

0:35:360:35:38

to make it more palatable.

0:35:380:35:40

Eichengrun suggested a simple chemical modification,

0:35:410:35:44

which would, in time,

0:35:440:35:45

lead to the production of two incredibly iconic drugs.

0:35:450:35:49

One of them, the world's bestselling painkiller.

0:35:500:35:53

The other, the world's most notorious drug.

0:35:540:35:57

It started innocently enough.

0:36:010:36:03

A young chemist in Eichengrun's team set about modifying salicylic acid,

0:36:030:36:08

using an approach that Eichengrun had suggested.

0:36:080:36:12

The result was crystals of acetylsalicylic acid.

0:36:120:36:17

Just as predicted, it no longer upset the stomach quite so much.

0:36:170:36:21

Eichengrun would eventually name this drug "aspirin".

0:36:210:36:24

Simple chemical modifications could clearly make better drugs.

0:36:260:36:30

Inspired by the this, a chemist in the Bayer team took morphine,

0:36:300:36:34

that powerful painkiller from poppies,

0:36:340:36:37

and tried the same reaction, to see what would happen.

0:36:370:36:40

The result was a chemical called diamorphine.

0:36:410:36:44

Better known to us as "heroin".

0:36:440:36:47

Thank you very much.

0:36:520:36:54

Both of these drugs, aspirin and heroin,

0:36:540:36:58

arrived in front of the chief tester, Heinrich Dreser.

0:36:580:37:02

And he promptly rejected one of them on the grounds it was dangerous.

0:37:020:37:06

Ironically enough, the one he rejected was the aspirin,

0:37:060:37:09

because he said it was bad for the heart.

0:37:090:37:12

But he loved heroin.

0:37:120:37:14

In fact, he named it because of the associations with heroic, powerful.

0:37:140:37:18

And with his ringing endorsement behind it,

0:37:180:37:20

heroin was soon being marketed to the world by Bayer.

0:37:200:37:24

The team at Bayer had accidentally made a far more addictive

0:37:260:37:29

version of morphine.

0:37:290:37:31

And, naturally, it sold fabulously.

0:37:310:37:34

Meanwhile, Eichengrun, irritated that his drug, aspirin,

0:37:340:37:38

was being overlooked, began secretly to carry out tests.

0:37:380:37:42

Eichengrun was convinced the new drug was safe

0:37:420:37:44

so he got a hold of a sample, and he tried it.

0:37:440:37:47

Nothing untoward happened.

0:37:470:37:49

So, next, secretly, he got hold of some Berlin doctors

0:37:490:37:52

and persuaded them to try it on their patients.

0:37:520:37:55

It was given to a small number of doctors and a dentist.

0:37:580:38:01

And a report came back from the dentist.

0:38:020:38:06

He said...

0:38:060:38:07

"I gave it to one of my patients who had a fever.

0:38:090:38:13

"But, to my astonishment, he said his toothache had been

0:38:140:38:17

"eased by taking the acetylsalicylic acid. It relieved pain."

0:38:170:38:22

This was completely unexpected.

0:38:240:38:27

The original salicylic acid brought down fevers,

0:38:270:38:30

but it didn't have any effect on toothache.

0:38:300:38:34

Eichengrun had clearly created something new and powerful.

0:38:340:38:38

So, Eichengrun decided to bypass Dreser

0:38:400:38:43

and went to the Head Of Research at Bayer.

0:38:430:38:47

He authorised more tests and in 1899,

0:38:470:38:50

a year after Bayer had introduced heroin to a grateful nation,

0:38:500:38:54

they started marketing this new drug.

0:38:540:38:56

Aspirin became one of the world's most successful drugs.

0:38:580:39:02

40 billion tablets are eaten every year.

0:39:020:39:06

And it was all thanks to chemists

0:39:060:39:08

tinkering with an industrial waste product - coal tar.

0:39:080:39:12

There was an early illustration of how a simple chemical

0:39:130:39:17

modification to an existing molecule,

0:39:170:39:19

could make a far superior drug, which had additional properties.

0:39:190:39:23

The additional properties of aspirin are due entirely to the acetyl group.

0:39:230:39:27

Without the acetyl group it wouldn't work.

0:39:270:39:30

And, rather amusingly, I keep reading reports of how,

0:39:300:39:33

in ancient times, plants containing salicylates were used as painkillers.

0:39:330:39:39

It's nonsense.

0:39:390:39:41

They might have been used as painkillers - they didn't work.

0:39:410:39:44

The acetyl group of aspirin, which was a synthetic drug,

0:39:440:39:47

had to be present in order to kill pain.

0:39:470:39:50

Despite its universal appeal, it took people more than 70 years

0:39:520:39:56

to understand how aspirin actually works.

0:39:560:39:59

Turns out, nothing like the opiates such as morphine.

0:39:590:40:03

Aspirin acts locally

0:40:030:40:05

and blocks pain long before it gets to the spinal column.

0:40:050:40:09

I'm going to demonstrate using my least favourite plant -

0:40:090:40:13

stinging nettles.

0:40:130:40:15

Ah!

0:40:150:40:17

Ah, yeah!

0:40:170:40:18

That hurts.

0:40:180:40:20

Damaged or irritated tissue releases a lot of chemicals which can

0:40:230:40:27

help healing but which also tend to simulate the pain nerves.

0:40:270:40:32

You could see the results as great swollen marks, inflammation.

0:40:320:40:36

And the same process is often the cause of headache and muscle ache.

0:40:360:40:40

Aspirin and the other anti-inflammatories

0:40:430:40:45

all work in the same way,

0:40:450:40:47

and they block a range of pains.

0:40:470:40:49

Anti-inflammatories stop your body producing the chemicals

0:40:490:40:54

it normally does when tissue has been damaged.

0:40:540:40:57

This not only prevents swelling

0:40:570:40:59

but also the release of chemicals that set off the pain nerves.

0:40:590:41:02

As well as blocking pain,

0:41:050:41:07

aspirin also blocks the hormones that led to platelet production.

0:41:070:41:11

Which means that middle-aged men like me

0:41:110:41:13

take small amounts of it to reduce our risk of getting heart attack.

0:41:130:41:17

Which is pretty ironic when you consider that aspirin

0:41:170:41:20

was originally rejected on the grounds it is bad for the heart.

0:41:200:41:25

Chemists had found ways to ensure that we were no longer

0:41:250:41:28

reliant on plants for our medicines.

0:41:280:41:31

Modifying simple molecules extracted from coal tar had given us

0:41:310:41:34

more powerful drugs than the natural world could provide.

0:41:340:41:38

With misplaced confidence, chemists now decided

0:41:410:41:44

they were going to try and design drugs from scratch.

0:41:440:41:47

The hope was they could produce something lucrative,

0:41:470:41:50

with few side-effects.

0:41:500:41:52

The reality was, they now unleashed onto a wholly unsuspecting world

0:41:520:41:57

a whole new Pandora's box of powerful potions.

0:41:570:42:02

This new phase, trying to make entirely synthetic drugs,

0:42:050:42:09

started as an attempt to correct the limitations of surgical aesthesia.

0:42:090:42:13

Ether was an irritant and made people sick.

0:42:160:42:20

chloroform, discovered soon after,

0:42:200:42:22

caused unacceptably high death rates.

0:42:220:42:24

Perhaps what was needed was a different way of delivering

0:42:260:42:30

antiseptic chemicals into the body.

0:42:300:42:32

The hypodermic needle had been invented in the 1840s.

0:42:340:42:38

And injecting anaesthetic via veins seemed promising.

0:42:380:42:41

When you breathe in a drug,

0:42:430:42:45

what you're trying to do is get a level of the drug into the brain.

0:42:450:42:49

And so if you put it in intravenously it goes to the brain faster.

0:42:490:42:55

So, in 1869, German chemist Oscar Liebreich

0:42:550:42:59

naively started to experiment with a substance called chloral hydrate,

0:42:590:43:03

which had been created many years before.

0:43:030:43:07

The chemical was known to produce chloroform

0:43:070:43:09

when you added an alkali to it.

0:43:090:43:11

So Liebreich thought to himself,

0:43:120:43:14

"If I inject this into the blood, which is mildly alkali,

0:43:140:43:17

"then perhaps I will produce chloroform inside the body."

0:43:170:43:21

So, it's worth doing.

0:43:210:43:22

It's certainly a bold thing to do because instead of trial and error

0:43:220:43:26

he was relying on chemical theory.

0:43:260:43:29

Well, it all seemed to go splendidly at first.

0:43:290:43:32

He injected it into patients and they did indeed...fall asleep.

0:43:320:43:35

His reasoning was flawless, but also completely wrong.

0:43:370:43:40

Chloral hydrate did not produce chloroform when injected into blood,

0:43:420:43:46

but a form of alcohol,

0:43:460:43:47

which did not numb the feeling or pain.

0:43:470:43:51

What Liebreich had stumbled upon was not a painkiller

0:43:510:43:54

but a drug that put people to sleep.

0:43:540:43:56

Chloral hydrate was used in some operations.

0:43:570:44:00

And if a few patients woke up screaming in the middle of it,

0:44:000:44:03

well, they had no memory of doing so afterwards.

0:44:030:44:06

A way of people to sleep safely and quickly

0:44:070:44:10

would be a real boon for surgery.

0:44:100:44:12

But chloral hydrate had its drawbacks.

0:44:120:44:14

It upset the veins, it caused inflammitis -

0:44:160:44:18

irritation in the veins.

0:44:180:44:20

And the duration of action was very long, so patients were very,

0:44:200:44:25

very sleepy for a long time.

0:44:250:44:27

They didn't wake up clear headed and bounce back to work or anything.

0:44:270:44:32

But for those who wanted a long sleep it was great.

0:44:330:44:37

Chemists produced a form that could be taken as a pill,

0:44:370:44:40

the world's first sleeping tablet.

0:44:400:44:43

And within ten years, Britons were taking a tonne of it every day.

0:44:430:44:47

Chloral hydrate soon entered popular culture.

0:44:520:44:54

In 1903, a Chicago newspaper reported that a saloon manager

0:44:540:44:59

had persuaded his employees to put chloral hydrate

0:44:590:45:02

into the drinks of customers suspected of having money.

0:45:020:45:06

And then afterwards they would rob them.

0:45:070:45:10

His name, Mickey Finn, became slang for any spiked drink.

0:45:100:45:14

Now, the importance of chloral hydrate was not just it was

0:45:140:45:17

incredibly popular, but was really one of the first drugs

0:45:170:45:20

to have been designed from scratch with a specific purpose.

0:45:200:45:24

The floodgates were open for any imaginative chemist to make

0:45:240:45:28

a lot of money.

0:45:280:45:30

It was a huge incentive and with their increasing knowledge

0:45:310:45:34

of which molecules had this sedative effect,

0:45:340:45:38

they turned out hundreds of new compounds.

0:45:380:45:41

One of them was to prove a worthy,

0:45:430:45:45

albeit infamous successor to chloral hydrate.

0:45:450:45:48

Because of its use by criminals,

0:45:490:45:51

chloral hydrate gained a somewhat notorious reputation.

0:45:510:45:55

But it would in turn spawn a more notorious anaesthetic.

0:45:550:46:00

Sodium thiopental.

0:46:000:46:02

Otherwise known as the "truth drug".

0:46:020:46:04

And I'm about to try it.

0:46:080:46:09

Sodium thiopental is part of a group of drugs called the "barbiturates",

0:46:150:46:19

and barbiturates were particular popular in the 1950s

0:46:190:46:23

and '60s as a form of sleeping pill.

0:46:230:46:26

They were also very dangerous.

0:46:260:46:28

Famously, Marilyn Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose.

0:46:280:46:32

Sodium thiopental was much faster acting than most barbiturates

0:46:320:46:36

and that made it a great anaesthetic.

0:46:360:46:39

But, oddly enough, it doesn't actually affect pain.

0:46:390:46:43

What Barbiturates do is slow down all the messages

0:46:440:46:47

being sent between nerves in the brain and the spinal column.

0:46:470:46:52

The more barbiturate there is,

0:46:520:46:54

the harder it is for chemical messages to cross the gaps

0:46:540:46:57

between one neuron and the next.

0:46:570:47:00

So, essential, your whole thinking process slows down

0:47:000:47:03

until you fall asleep.

0:47:030:47:06

With thiopental, that happened very quickly indeed.

0:47:060:47:09

And that was just what the anaesthetist in the 1930s wanted.

0:47:090:47:13

Thiopental was developed specifically for getting people to sleep quickly.

0:47:140:47:20

They knew how to keep people asleep once they got them there

0:47:200:47:23

with drugs like ether and chloroform,

0:47:230:47:25

which was still used widely.

0:47:250:47:28

As thiopental starts to act it affects your brain bit by bit.

0:47:280:47:33

And this is the key to one of its more controversial uses.

0:47:330:47:35

The Americans noticed that when patients were in that twilight zone

0:47:390:47:43

halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness,

0:47:430:47:46

they became more chatty, disinhibited

0:47:460:47:49

and also forgot what they'd been talking about afterwards.

0:47:490:47:52

They decided this might form the basis for a truth drug,

0:47:520:47:55

an interrogation drug.

0:47:550:47:57

Now, I'm going to have a go at trying to maintain the fiction

0:47:570:48:01

that I am Dr Michael Mosley, the famous heart surgeon.

0:48:010:48:04

OK, so I'm actually feeling quite anxious at the moment.

0:48:100:48:13

Sodium thiopental has a reputation, not just as a truth drug but also

0:48:130:48:17

because it's used in lethal injections.

0:48:170:48:21

Anaesthetist Austin Leach

0:48:210:48:23

will be monitoring my vital signs throughout.

0:48:230:48:25

These will indicate if my body is feeling pain.

0:48:250:48:29

Before I take the drug, he wants to see how my heart responds

0:48:290:48:32

when he crunches his knuckles against my chest.

0:48:320:48:36

That's quite uncomfortable, yeah.

0:48:360:48:38

Oh...

0:48:410:48:42

My heart rate jumped from 54 to 64 in response to pain.

0:48:430:48:47

Now, it's time to experience the effects of a light dose

0:48:490:48:52

of sodium thiopental.

0:48:520:48:53

I'll just give you a small dose but quite rapidly.

0:48:570:49:00

It's in now.

0:49:010:49:03

Doesn't feel like anything.

0:49:080:49:10

It hasn't got there yet.

0:49:100:49:11

That's probably why I'm not feeling...

0:49:110:49:13

Am I feeling just a bit...? Oh, yes, there it goes.

0:49:130:49:16

Yup, there it is. Blimey! Wow!

0:49:180:49:20

Oh, jeez! Yeah.

0:49:220:49:24

That is like... Oh, that's like drinking a bottle of champagne.

0:49:260:49:29

'So, under the influence of thiopental,

0:49:290:49:32

'can I still lie about my job?'

0:49:320:49:34

I am a cardiac...

0:49:340:49:37

HE LAUGHS

0:49:370:49:39

I'm a cardiac surgeon.

0:49:390:49:41

I'm a world famous cardiac surgeon.

0:49:410:49:43

Would you like to tell me what the last operation you carried out was?

0:49:430:49:47

It was a bypass. They survived.

0:49:470:49:50

But...uh, yeah. I was awesome.

0:49:510:49:55

Now, I'm just going to repeat the pain test...

0:49:570:50:00

-Yeah, OK.

-..in your sternum.

0:50:000:50:02

And tell me how uncomfortable this is.

0:50:020:50:06

Uh, that hurts, but it doesn't really hurt.

0:50:060:50:09

I'm kind of aware of it but I don't care.

0:50:090:50:12

It's actually quite painful.

0:50:120:50:14

'My heart rate jumps right up.

0:50:140:50:17

'My body is still responding to pain but, bizarrely, my brain isn't.

0:50:170:50:21

'It's all very odd.'

0:50:210:50:22

That is so strange.

0:50:220:50:27

'I had just about managed to lie about my job,

0:50:270:50:30

'however unconvincingly.

0:50:300:50:32

'But what would happen if he upped the dose?'

0:50:320:50:35

Oh, yes.

0:50:350:50:37

'The drugs effects aren't predictable,

0:50:370:50:39

'so I don't know what will happen.'

0:50:390:50:42

-Ask me any questions.

-So, what is your name?

0:50:420:50:45

-My name is Michael Mosley.

-And what is your profession?

0:50:450:50:48

I'm a television producer.

0:50:480:50:50

Well, executive producer. Well, presenter.

0:50:500:50:53

It's a mix of the three of them.

0:50:530:50:56

So, you don't have any history of performing cardiac surgery?

0:50:560:50:59

None whatsoever.

0:50:590:51:01

None whatsoever.

0:51:010:51:02

I am without...

0:51:060:51:09

doubt...

0:51:090:51:11

a good television presenter and not a lousy cardiac surgeon.

0:51:110:51:15

'Part of the reason I caved in so quickly

0:51:150:51:17

'is I had this overwhelming urge to tell the truth.'

0:51:170:51:21

'It's an odd feeling. Quite cathartic.'

0:51:210:51:24

The weird thing is I don't want to lie. I'm feeling so...

0:51:240:51:27

It's not just that I can't.

0:51:270:51:30

It's just I feel so benign towards the world, I don't want to do it.

0:51:300:51:34

I don't want to say I'm Michael Mosley,

0:51:340:51:37

a cardiac surgeon cos I'm not. So...

0:51:370:51:39

'What else I admitted to under the drug's influence must

0:51:420:51:45

'remain for ever secret, from me as well.

0:51:450:51:48

'Afterwards I realised I had forgotten everything

0:51:480:51:50

'that had happened.'

0:51:500:51:52

Did I confess to the fact I'm not a cardiac surgeon?

0:51:520:51:55

So, you can't remember?

0:51:550:51:56

You can't remember what it was you said about your professional status?

0:51:560:52:00

No. I don't know what I was talking about.

0:52:000:52:04

Yeah.

0:52:040:52:05

I feel quite...

0:52:050:52:07

snoozy.

0:52:070:52:08

I feel like I could probably go to sleep now.

0:52:080:52:11

And that's the reason thiopental

0:52:130:52:15

became such a popular anaesthetic drug.

0:52:150:52:18

It puts you to sleep quickly and with just a simple injection.

0:52:180:52:21

A typical anaesthetic of the 1940s would be getting people off

0:52:240:52:28

to sleep with an injection of thiopental.

0:52:280:52:30

And then keeping them asleep with some ether.

0:52:300:52:32

It was a triumph for the chemists.

0:52:340:52:37

A drug that did exactly what it was designed to do.

0:52:370:52:40

But it was only designed to make people unconscious during surgery,

0:52:400:52:44

not to stop them feeling pain.

0:52:440:52:46

What we're aiming to do is to induce unconsciousness,

0:52:480:52:52

so that the patient has no awareness of what would otherwise be

0:52:520:52:54

an extremely unpleasant experience for them.

0:52:540:52:58

To deal with the other aspects, such as pain,

0:52:580:53:00

we need to give supplementary drugs, which are specific painkillers.

0:53:000:53:03

So, chemists nowadays are concentrating their attentions

0:53:090:53:12

not on new anaesthetic drugs, but new painkillers.

0:53:120:53:15

Because we can build pretty well any molecule of any shape

0:53:170:53:21

we want now, by design,

0:53:210:53:24

that's the way in which pharmaceutical companies

0:53:240:53:26

are increasingly orientated.

0:53:260:53:29

It sounds simple. It's actually very, very hard.

0:53:290:53:33

The way chemists create new drugs is essentially the same way

0:53:350:53:38

they did 100 years ago, when they started experimenting with coal tar.

0:53:380:53:43

They take simple molecules and build them up into complex ones.

0:53:430:53:47

These days you'll not be astonished to hear

0:53:490:53:51

things are much more hi-tech.

0:53:510:53:54

Most new drugs start out in a so-called compound library,

0:53:540:53:58

like this one.

0:53:580:53:59

There are over three million different molecules here.

0:53:590:54:03

With this vast repository of molecules to start from,

0:54:070:54:10

chemists can put together almost any compound.

0:54:100:54:13

But there is still the problem of knowing which compounds

0:54:130:54:16

will be useful.

0:54:160:54:17

And in the search for the perfect painkiller,

0:54:190:54:22

a clue to that has come from a most unusual place,

0:54:220:54:26

a few very rare people born without the ability to feel pain.

0:54:260:54:31

In the past, they might have ended up in freak shows.

0:54:320:54:36

But today, some doctors see them as the key to finding a new

0:54:360:54:39

class of painkilling drugs.

0:54:390:54:41

We knew long before we even started thinking about drug development

0:54:430:54:46

that whatever we found in these patients would be a great target for

0:54:460:54:51

a drug because this would reproduce the pain-free existence they have.

0:54:510:54:56

Researchers started by exploring just what people with this

0:54:560:54:59

condition can or cannot feel.

0:54:590:55:01

They could feel when you touch them, they could feel cold.

0:55:030:55:06

So, it so it also told you from this

0:55:060:55:09

that the sensation of pain was different to touch,

0:55:090:55:12

temperature, vibration - you put a vibration on them, they felt it.

0:55:120:55:16

This was encouraging because it suggested

0:55:170:55:21

that pain could be switched off without affecting other nerves.

0:55:210:55:24

The question was, how?

0:55:240:55:26

It turns out these people have inherited a faulty gene,

0:55:260:55:30

which means that their nerves cannot transmit pain signals.

0:55:300:55:34

While all their other nerves are normal,

0:55:360:55:38

their pain nerves are unable to send electrical messages.

0:55:380:55:41

Identifying the problem gene pointed to a particular protein.

0:55:430:55:47

A protein that is necessary for us to feel pain.

0:55:470:55:50

Once they'd found the protein, the next thing that had to do

0:55:530:55:56

was see if they could block its action in normal people,

0:55:560:56:01

see if you could temporarily switch pain off.

0:56:010:56:04

So, you can imagine the idea that what we really know about

0:56:040:56:08

is the shape of the lock.

0:56:080:56:11

And what you're trying to do is to design a molecular key

0:56:110:56:16

which will slot in.

0:56:160:56:17

The problem with building a molecular key is you may not

0:56:170:56:20

be selective enough.

0:56:200:56:22

It's no good switching off pain

0:56:220:56:23

if you also switch off other essential protein production.

0:56:230:56:28

You want to make sure that it is very selective,

0:56:280:56:31

that it doesn't have major effect on other enzymes

0:56:310:56:34

in other crucial pathways in the body.

0:56:340:56:36

Now, you have a real lead.

0:56:360:56:38

Then you have to show that this is really nontoxic.

0:56:380:56:41

Drugs that appear to block just that crucial protein

0:56:420:56:46

are now undergoing a long process of testing.

0:56:460:56:49

And so far they are showing great promise.

0:56:490:56:52

The hope is that they will usher in a new era of pain relief.

0:56:530:56:59

Now you can see that there is an opportunity to think about

0:56:590:57:03

a new approach to treatment of pain that offers hope for millions.

0:57:030:57:09

The journey from herbal medicines to synthetic drugs designed

0:57:150:57:20

and made from scratch has taken a mere 200 years.

0:57:200:57:24

It has been driven by obsession, need,

0:57:260:57:29

happy and sometimes less happy accident.

0:57:290:57:34

And yet, some things have not changed.

0:57:350:57:38

Over the last couple of centuries,

0:57:380:57:40

we have developed a huge range of painkilling drugs,

0:57:400:57:43

from anaesthetics to aspirin.

0:57:430:57:46

But, if I was in terrible pain,

0:57:460:57:49

then the substance I would still use is this - morphine.

0:57:490:57:53

It's very strange to think that in the 200 years

0:57:540:57:57

since it was first isolated by Friedrich Serturner,

0:57:570:58:01

we have developed nothing which is as effective for treating

0:58:010:58:06

excruciating pain as this extraordinary substance.

0:58:060:58:10

Painkillers, wonderful though they are, are only treating symptoms.

0:58:200:58:25

In the next programme, I'll be looking at the remarkable stories

0:58:250:58:29

of those who develop drugs that cure.

0:58:290:58:31

Including the successful attempts to capture and contain

0:58:310:58:34

the greatest mass murderer in history.

0:58:340:58:37

If you'd like to take part in the Open University's quiz on pain,

0:58:380:58:42

or perhaps find out something more about pus and poison,

0:58:420:58:46

then go to the website below and follow the links

0:58:460:58:49

to the Open University.

0:58:490:58:51

Subtitles By Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:540:58:57

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