The story of medicine : pain, pus & poison Cover Image

DVD

The story of medicine : pain, pus & poison / A BBC Open University partnership ; produced and directed by Alex Freeman, Ben Crichton, and Giles Harrison ; series producer, Steve Crabtree.

Freeman, Alex (Producer), (television director,, television producer.). Crabtree, Steve (Producer), (television producer.). Crichton, Ben, (director,, television producer.). Harrison, Giles, 1974- (television director,, television producer.). Mosley, Michael, (host.). British Broadcasting Corporation, (production company.). Open University, (production company.). Athena (Firm), (distributor.). RLJ Entertainment, (distributor.).

Summary:

Dr. Michael Mosley shows how drugs have revolutionized medicine and changed the course of human history. Unfolding over a period of 200 years, it's an extraordinary tale of daring, self-experimentation, revelation, genius, and outright luck. In three episodes, Mosley recounts how humans have learned to fight back against disease and death.

Pain: 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' - and for centuries the challenge has been to find something that will lessen or even switch off these sensations to bring us relief. Dr. Mosley discovers just what pain is, why we want to control it and how we ultimately did it when the discovery of morphine, the world's first pharmaceutical, at the beginning of the 19th century led to a 200-year journey of scientific breakthrough, discovery and self-experimentation.

Pus: Infection can take over the entire human body and if our immune systems aren't strong enough we will die - in fact, infectious disease has regularly wiped out millions of people across the planet. Dr. Mosley explores our earliest attempts to tackle infection and reveals the moment we began to harness the power of microbes to fight back. 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.

Poison: Dr. Mosley looks at poisons, exploring the turning points when scientists went from finding antidotes to poisons to applying poisons as a cure - celebrating the eccentrics and mavericks whose breakthroughs were to pave the way for some of the most striking treatments of modern medicine. Of the medicines explored in this series, those that are derived from poisons are perhaps the most extraordinary. The story of turning poisons into medicines encompasses the planet's most deadly substances, in which we turned killers into cures.

Record details

ISBN: 9781621721734
ISBN: 1621721736
Physical Description: 2 videodiscs (approximately 156 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 viewer's guide (13 pages : illustrations, maps ; 15 cm)
Edition: Widescreen.
Publisher: [Silver Spring, Maryland] : Athena, [2014] ; [Chatsworth, California] :
Copyright: ©2014

Content descriptions

General Note:	Documentary. "Broadcast in the U.K. as Pain, pus & poison : the search for modern medicines." Originally broadcast in three parts, October 2013, on the BBC network. Program content: ©2013. Special features: "Seven wonders of the microbe world"; viewer's guide.
Creation/Production Credits Note:	Director, Ben Crichton, Alex Freeman, Giles Harrison.
Participant or Performer Note:	Host, Michael Mosley.
System Details Note:	DVD; NTSC; widescreen presentation; Dolby digital stereo.
Language Note:	English audio with optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.