Interesting Facts About Pain Relieving
Pain is universal. We all feel pain at one point or another, it can be because of an injury, cold or the flu, lack of sleep followed by headaches, that time of the month with the unbearable cramps, or even worse – chronic pain on a daily basis because of a disease like arthritis or cancer. We all feel it and hate it, except for some rare cases.
Thankfully, for those of us who feel pain we have a wide range of pain relief pills to count on that one can even buy from trusted pharmacies online, as long as they’re bought with a prescription.
Humankind has always tried to find some sort of pain relief, so in ancient times when neither pills nor pharmacies existed, people were creative in treating their pain. For some, pain management meant performing various rituals to chase the evil spirits away.
This was part of many cultures, like the Native Americans and the Inca for instance, and giving offerings to the gods was part of the healing, whereas for others, like the Egyptians, some more radical methods were used such as placing electric eels on the ailing, as for the Chinese acupuncture was a pain relieving method practiced since 100BC.
It wasn’t until the Middle Ages when more and more herbs began to be used, a cocktail of herbs if you will, to create a mixture of drugs. The 16th century was popular for its laudanum, for example.
This was followed by morphine in the 1800s, but it wasn’t until 1846 when considerable breakthrough was made in medicine with William T.G. Morton and his Letheon, i.e. sulfuric ether, setting the foundations for anesthesia.
Throughout the 19th century another famous relieving method was one that was used in ancient Egypt that became the fashion for treating and preventing infections: leeching with the Hirudo medicinalis species of leeches.
It was also in this century, specifically 1886 when Coke was accidentally invented by pharmacist John Pemberton who was trying to create a pain reliever. Unlike today, Coke was used as the cure for everything because it contained a small percentage of cocaine as can be guessed by its name, but was later replaced with caffeine because the general opinion on cocaine changed by 1929.
Fast forward to today and the variety of options of pain relief pills, carefully separated in categories such as NSAIDs (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like ibuprofen, acetaminophen with paracetamol as the example, opioids like morphine, antidepressants, muscle relaxants, and topical agents, as effective as they can be, it’s important to only follow a doctor’s orders.
This is essential due to the alarming numbers of people dying from prescription pills like the opioids, even more than heroin.
