From Pain to Poison: How Drugs Revolutionized Medicine

Pain has a profound effect on our bodies. When we are experiencing it, millions of nerve cells deep within our brains are firing, telling us "it hurts". For centuries, the challenge has been to find something that will lessen or even switch off these sensations to bring us some relief. In this program, we'll discover just what pain is and how organisms on this planet evolved to experience it.

Michael explores our earliest attempts to tackle infection and reveals the moment we began to harness the power of microbes to fight back against illness. This is the story of how scientists, chemists, and doctors helped us win the battle, from Louis Pasteur to Howard Florey, and how a small team of dedicated men and women wiped out one of mankind's deadliest diseases: Smallpox.

Michael ends the series with a look at poisons, exploring the incredible turning points when we went from using antidotes to poisons to applying poisons themselves as a cure. We celebrate the eccentrics and mavericks whose breakthroughs paved the way for some of the most striking and unique treatments in modern medicine.