The History of Various Anesthetics and Remedies....

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Disclaimer: I have no medical training or schooling.

I know my website is a mess. I'm investing more time in the English version than in the Danish, which might be a little silly as my intended audience really is here at home in Denmark.

Unfortunately my laptop can hardly run Visual Studio connected to github. Sometimes waiting for a semicolon takes 30 seconds or more. Sometimes the computer just blanks out and shuts down, overwhelmed.

As the site is about drugs it dawned upon me (after seeing Gladiator 2 and seeing the lanista's medicus administering "Dragon's Breath" to a wounded gladiator (the protagonist of course) which appears to be scopolamine. He administers that and opium for sewing a wound up (which strikes me as a little soft for a hardcore gladiator getting 20-30 stings. Couldn't he just bite hard down on a stick?! :smile: ) The medicus mentions infection (while I I think tetanus would be up there along with it although they perhaps wouldn't know the difference) although I fail to see how scopolamine and opium would be of help there (with infection I mean).

Anyway, scopolamine seems to be a pre-op drug, which among other things, decreases the production of saliva but without much anesthetic effect in itself (unless the combination with opium produces some synergetic effect I havent't heard of).

The film is what it is: popcorn entertainment. It just got me thinking about how far back the knowledge of remedies like scopolamine, digitalis, cannabis, and especially opium really reaches...?

Yeah, I know I can research this myself - and I will - but perhaps we have some historians or doctors here with innate (EDIT: OK, "innate" didn't mean what I thought it did. Why yes it did!) knowledge they're ready to share with a stupid like me.

EDIT: Ech, I'm gonna leave some parantheses here for you to disperse over my "text" above: (((((((((())))))))))).
 
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You might enjoy

An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug, Cocaine​

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Addiction-Sigmund-William-Halsted/dp/1400078792/?tag=pfamazon01-20

It is about how Freud and Halsted got addicted to cocaine researching anesthetics. Halsted was important in the development of US surgical practice and the author postulates that Halsted developed surgical teams so that he could continue to conduct successful surgeries despite his addiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
 
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Frabjous said:
You might enjoy

An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug, Cocaine​

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Addiction-Sigmund-William-Halsted/dp/1400078792/?tag=pfamazon01-20

It is about how Freud and Halsted got addicted to cocaine researching anesthetics. Halsted was important in the development of US surgical practice and the author postulates that Halsted developed surgical teams so that he could continue to conduct successful surgeries despite his addiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
Yeah, Freud - and presumably many of his contemporaries - used OTC cocaine and laudanum to an extent that would get them instantly "cancelled" in our day and age.
 
Also, I read that when Hermann Göring were arrested he was carrying Germany's entire supply of dihydrocodeine (~40.000 doses but I'm pretty much guessing here). The allies had to cure him of his addiction before he could stand trial. We all know how that ended. He had another little pill stashed away.

One of the last concerts arranged by Albert Speer had girls of age <10 walking around with bows in their hair and offering cyanide-capsules to the guests as they left. I hope this story is apocryphal but nothing suprises me anymore. (I may have mentioned this before somewhere. Sometimes you loose track.)
 
sbrothy said:
Disclaimer: I have no medical training or schooling
My dentist needs to have that put on a T shirt for himself. I would also add, "especially analgesics."

(I've just had a painful & lengthy extraction so I'm tetchy)

In line with the thread topic, I would like to add Dentistry to the thread as a branch of medicine and pain management.

I know that barbers were dentists in the UK at some point before medicine was developed, hair cut and a tooth pulled as a sort of job lot.
Perhaps the discipline has moved on a little.
Obviously biting down on something to help with pain was not an option. Presumably alcohol was used?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_surgeon

Modern dentists used cocaine, then lidocaine, not sure if they still use nitrous oxide. You can pay more to be sedated these days, a combination of a strong painkiller like fentanyl and a tranquilizer. They use that combo for some exploratory surgery so it could be the same for dentistry.

An article here, the abstract made me smile.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9275172/

EDIT: From Ai which cites the BBC, "Science museum group" and "the Bulgarian society of medical sciences,"

"Alcohol: Patients were frequently given large quantities of strong spirits, ale, or wine to dull the senses and induce a semi-conscious state before a procedure.
Physical Restraint: Because these early natural analgesics were unreliable and frequently caused overdoses, the primary method of coping with surgery involved sheer willpower. Assistants forcefully held the patient down while the surgeon operated."
 
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pinball1970 said:
My dentist needs to have that put on a T shirt for himself. I would also add, "especially analgesics."

(I've just had a painful & lengthy extraction so I'm tetchy)

In line with the thread topic, I would like to add Dentistry to the thread as a branch of medicine and pain management.

I know that barbers were dentists in the UK at some point before medicine was developed, hair cut and a tooth pulled as a sort of job lot.
Perhaps the discipline has moved on a little.
Obviously biting down on something to help with pain was not an option. Presumably alcohol was used?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_surgeon

Modern dentists used cocaine, then lidocaine, not sure if they still use nitrous oxide. You can pay more to be sedated these days, a combination of a strong painkiller like fentanyl and a tranquilizer. They use that combo for some exploratory surgery so it could be the same for dentistry.

An article here, the abstract made me smile.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9275172/

EDIT: From Ai which cites the BBC, "Science museum group" and "the Bulgarian society of medical sciences,"

"Alcohol: Patients were frequently given large quantities of strong spirits, ale, or wine to dull the senses and induce a semi-conscious state before a procedure.
Physical Restraint: Because these early natural analgesics were unreliable and frequently caused overdoses, the primary method of coping with surgery involved sheer willpower. Assistants forcefully held the patient down while the surgeon operated."
I have a couple of fun (YMMV) stories about dentists, both real and fictional, but I'll wait till you come down from your botched sedation. :woot:

Oh, and I'm sorry to hear you ended up in the clutches of such an amateur. Incidentally, have you seen the movie "The Marathon Man"?
 
sbrothy said:
Also, I read that when Hermann Göring were arrested he was carrying Germany's entire supply of dihydrocodeine (~40.000 doses but I'm pretty much guessing here). The allies had to cure him of his addiction before he could stand trial. We all know how that ended. He had another little pill stashed away.

One of the last concerts arranged by Albert Speer had girls of age <10 walking around with bows in their hair and offering cyanide-capsules to the guests as they left. I hope this story is apocryphal but nothing suprises me anymore. (I may have mentioned this before somewhere. Sometimes you loose track.)

Heh, I looked up apocryphal just to be sure I used it correctly (seems I did). But one synonym is "spurious" which I knew but I wan't aware of this particular meaning:

3
: born to parents not married to each other

So I guess saying that a child is spurious is a somewhat more polite way of calling it a bastard(?)!
 
Actually the worst I've seen is from a Danish documentary about weird people in India. One wandered around on the Ganges river bank looking for corpses with marrow he could eat (I kid you not!), he called himself a wizard but my first thought was "ghoul"!

Another, and here comes the sedation connection, was a man who had to get rid of his penis to make money as a ladyboy. He got an aspirin and a raspberry soda and then they went to work with a rusty serrated knife. He was quite brave. Scarcely a word got over his lips! I suspect he had fainted at that point.

India is a big and weird country.

EDIT: Oh, and scary and incomprehensible.
 
  • #10
pinball1970 said:
My dentist needs to have that put on a T shirt for himself. I would also add, "especially analgesics."

(I've just had a painful & lengthy extraction so I'm tetchy)

In line with the thread topic, I would like to add Dentistry to the thread as a branch of medicine and pain management.
Watch "The Little House of Horrors" dentist scene.
 
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  • #11
BillTre said:
Watch "The Little House of Horrors" dentist scene.
Haha, hilarious. It reminds me mysteriously of Naked Lunch!
 
  • #12
BillTre said:
Watch "The Little House of Horrors" dentist scene.
Thanks for the reference Bill, I will put that on the back burner for now, I think.

@sbrothy Marathon man, yes I've seen that one. Nice thoughts, drills, teeth, exposed nerves, eating diamonds etc.

When the ordeal was coming to the end I knew I was close to my local at least, my favourite Jaipur on draft, ease the pain. (In the barber surgeon days it would have been the other way round of course)
Until he prescribed me Metronidazole that is, so Jaipur and all things ethanol are out for seven days plus change.
 
  • #13
pinball1970 said:
Thanks for the reference Bill, I will put that on the back burner for now, I think.

@sbrothy Marathon man, yes I've seen that one. Nice thoughts, drills, teeth, exposed nerves, eating diamonds etc.

When the ordeal was coming to the end I knew I was close to my local at least, my favourite Jaipur on draft, ease the pain. (In the barber surgeon days it would have been the other way round of course)
Until he prescribed me Metronidazole that is, so Jaipur and all things ethanol are out for seven days plus change.
Metronidazole? I guess that's one for my website. I once bought a bunch of those ampuls dentists load their syringes with, those syringes with the nasty bendy needles the use to get all up in your teethy business with.

I have some werid contacts but be that as it may. It's a mixture of lidocaine and fentanyl. I had so much pain I actually tried to inject it into my gums with the smallest, thinnest needle I could find (So yes, I know all about pain!). After a happy spill it turned out that I could just drip the stuff directly on my hurting tooth and voila, 2 hours of happy bliss. Finally, after a couple of days I could get to to the dentist and get the most welcome root-canal work I've ever had!

EDIT: Oh, and as for the website I'm aware there's something wrong with the 3D lighting. I just can't be bothered right now.
 
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sbrothy said:
I have some werid contacts but be that as it may. It's a mixture of lidocaine and fentanyl. I had so much pain I actually tried to inject it into my gums with the smallest, thinnest needle I could find (So yes, I know all about pain!). After a happy spill it turned out that I could just drip the stuff directly on my hurting tooth and voila, 2 hours of happy bliss. Finally, after a couple of days I could get to to the dentist and get the most welcome root-canal work I've ever had!
As critical as I am about certain dentists I have met and who went on to hurt me, I would never recommend "do it yourself" surgery, dentistry or medication. That is also not medical advice, it is advice never to listen to anyone except people who are qualified as I am sure you agree ;)
 
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pinball1970 said:
As critical as I am about certain dentists I have met and who went on to hurt me, I would never recommend "do it yourself" surgery, dentistry or medication. That is also not medical advice, it is advice never to listen to anyone except people who are qualified as I am sure you agree ;)
Oh, I do. Then again I'm not your ordinary customer as you've probably already deduced.
 
  • #17
sbrothy said:
Actually the worst I've seen is from a Danish documentary about weird people in India. One wandered around on the Ganges river bank looking for corpses with marrow he could eat (I kid you not!), he called himself a wizard but my first thought was "ghoul"!

Another, and here comes the sedation connection, was a man who had to get rid of his penis to make money as a ladyboy. He got an aspirin and a raspberry soda and then they went to work with a rusty serrated knife. He was quite brave. Scarcely a word got over his lips! I suspect he had fainted at that point.

India is a big and weird country.

EDIT: Oh, and scary and incomprehensible.
Wow, that sounds pretty dark. At least India has changed by a lot in the 2020s. Wasn't some medical science invented there?
 
  • #18
pinball1970 said:
As critical as I am about certain dentists I have met and who went on to hurt me, I would never recommend "do it yourself" surgery, dentistry or medication. That is also not medical advice, it is advice never to listen to anyone except people who are qualified as I am sure you agree ;)

As I said I updated my website with a disclaimer inspired by you. I saw what you meant.

EDIT: Which I undestand didn't really make sense together but I already answered this. I just wanted to make sure you saw the result.


AlexB23 said:
Wow, that sounds pretty dark. At least India has changed by a lot in the 2020s. Wasn't some medical science invented there?

One would think no? I'm just afraid that certain parts of India is stil medieval.
 
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sbrothy said:
As I said I updated my website with a disclaimer inspired by you. I saw what you meant.

EDIT: Which I undestand didn't really make sense together but I already answered this. I just wanted to make sure you saw the result.




One would think no? I'm just afraid that certain parts of India is stil medieval.
Well, one guy Sushruta invented cataract surgery and rhinoplasty in India. There is a paper on Indian contributions. Not as much as the West, but still notable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushruta
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8514395/
 
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AlexB23 said:
Well, one guy Sushruta invented cataract surgery and rhinoplasty in India. There is a paper on Indian contributions. Not as much as the West, but still notable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushruta
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8514395/
Yeah, I read a fictional (but extremely well studied) book where a jewish "doctor" (We're talking ~1000-2000 AD), specializing in ophthalmology almost made people think he was Jesus (he got close to be burned alive) because he gave a man with cataracts his vision back!

Being too smart then could be very dangerous.

EDIT: I think I meant BCE....?
 
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sbrothy said:
As I said I updated my website with a disclaimer inspired by you. I saw what you meant
I got that from here most likely.
 
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sbrothy said:
Yeah, I read a fictional (but extremely well studied) book where a jewish "doctor" (We're talking ~1000-2000 AD), specializing in ophthalmology almost made people think he was Jesus (he got close to be burned alive) because he gave a man with cataracts his vision back!

Being too smart then could be very dangerous.

EDIT: I think I meant BCE....?
Yeah, people thought science was forbidden magic back then.
 
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pinball1970 said:
I got that from here most likely.
I think I may have got it from you really! :smile:
 
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A post by a relatively new user offering medical advice has been deleted. Please everybody remember that we cannot offer medical advice here at PF. Thank you.

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