Early Medical Applications

The history of medicine is the history of a quest for better and more certain means to treat disease and pain. Modern physicians readily admit that until the early 1800s science played only a minor role in curing diseases. Before then, thousands of patients suffering from a variety of diseases were treated with baseless cures often dating back to the Middle Ages. Physicians recommended unscientific and often ineffectual treatments such as purging the body by inducing vomiting and diarrhea, removing "bad blood" by placing leeches on the patient's skin, and "balancing the body" with a variety of traditional herbal remedies.

In the context of this historical backdrop, the discovery of opium's analgesic and possibly curative properties caused optimism to soar within the medical community. Finding cures for many common yet life-threatening diseases was suddenly a...