Man and plants against pain

The history of the pain-relieving drugs has been an enigma in one respect at least: why, if pain-relieving drugs were so nearly within reach, did it take Man so many centunes to realize their potentialities? Several hypotheses have been put forward. One asserts that doctors were unwilling to experiment, fearing they might inadvertently cause death and thus break the Hippocratic oath. The social scientists sometimes lean to the belief that, because pain provides an opportunity to show fortitude, the demand for pain-relievers may not have been nearly so great as we are now led to assume it to have been. "Union Rules" also come in for their share of "guilt." In medieval times, the physicians' guilds strictly prohibited surgeons from giving internal medicines, for surgeons were considered mere unlettered craftsmen. Thus, they could do little about relieving pain, even if they were inclined to try. Finally, religious-superstitious beliefs can be held partly responsible. Pain and death were held by many cultures to be inflicted by God on a wicked people, and any attempt to avoid them could be considered opposition to Divine Will. The future will certainly see no decrease in the demand for pain-relieving drugs. If the present state of affairs can be taken as an indication, the decline in importance of botanical analgesics and anesthetics should continue. Nature has fortuitously provided Man with certain pain-relieving drugs; Man improves on his legacy. With advanced chemical techniques, pharmacologists and chemists are now able to prepare an infinite variety of compounds, delicately balancing their toxic against their therapeutic properties. Man's rational planning has in the end yielded better anodynes than Nature's random gifts. Nature has provided the starting point for chemical research, and Man has learned to attempt variations on Nature's themes. We might well expect Man to continue making superior analgesics and anesthetics-and Nature to go right on providing starting points for his research.