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Dr Michael Mosley is a wonderful programme maker who is responsible for several other great documentaries I’ve mentioned before, including Medical Mavericks, The Story of Science, Frontline Medicine and several episodes of Horizon. Now he’s presenting a new three-part series called Pain, Pus & Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines.
The first episode deals with the search for medicines to relieve pain. Several of the stories he presents have been presented in his previous programmes, however it’s always nice to have an update. He tells the story of the development of ether for use in operations, which was marked by conflict between William T. G. Morton, who performed a painless tooth extraction with the drug in 1846, and Henry Jacob Bigelow, who arranged a demonstrations where ether was used in an operation on a patient’s neck tumor.
“Ether Day 1846” by Warren and Lucia Prosperi (2001)
He also explains how the drugs Heroin and Aspirin were developed simultaneously and initially Heroin was selected as the preferred drug and marketed successfully by Bayer AG. Aspirin slowly grew in popularity as Heroin’s addictive properties began to cause concern and Aspirin became one of the most popular drugs in the world.
Mosley tests the medicines he is talking about on himself, which really brings his programmes to life, proving he’s really serious about what he’s talking about, or at least eager to get high! In this first episode, he conducts several staggering experiments, including rubbing cocaine into his eye before poking it and having himself intravenously drugged with sodium thiopental, to test its ability as a truth serum.
The show is incredibly engaging, and I particularly enjoy his explanations of how the painkillers actually function in the body, something I always wonder about when taking them! The episode concludes with a celebration of morphine, the drug that has endured for 200 years despite huge developments in medicine.
Episode 1: Pain is on iPlayer now, as is the next episode, Pus.
People have always suffered from bad breath, and there have always been suggested remedies for it, such as wine mouthwashes, charcoal toothpaste and chewing herbs. However at the turn of the century, advertisers seized on the common problem of bad breath to sell Listerine as the world’s first marketed mouthwash.
Listerine advertisement
Listerine was formulated in 1879 by Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Jordan Wheat Lambert in St. Louis, Missouri as a surgical antiseptic. It was used for a variety of purposes: cleaning wounds, a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. In 1895 it began to be marketed as a dental medicine, which dentists could use for oral care. Then in 1914 it was marketed for the first time as a mouthwash.
To help sell Listerine as a mouthwash to a population who did not consider bad breath to be a bad enough problem to start medicating, the company seized an obscure medical term for bad breath ‘halitosis’, to make people think they had an actual condition.
No matter how charming you may be or how fond of you your friends are, you cannot expect them to put up with halitosis (unpleasant breath) forever. They may be nice to you – but it is an effort. Don’t fool yourself that you never have halitosis as do so many self-assured people who constantly offend this way.
Listerine bottle from the 1920s
Listerine’s advertising campaigns were aimed at young men and women, encouraging them to think that halitosis was what was ruining their love life and Listerine mouth wash could help them find a spouse. Ads claimed that ’68 hairdressers state that about every third woman, many of them from the wealthy class, is halitoxic.’
From the 1920s, this advertising formula was successful and Listerine’s revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million. Listerine was sold in a glass bottle with no changes to the brand until the 1990s, when new bottles and flavours were introduced.
Lovely Old Tree 
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