Episodes
Series | Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | 01 | Kill Of Cure | 19990113 | Curare, used on the arrow tips of Amazonian hunters to stop prey dead in its tracks, is also widely used by Western medicine in anaesthesia. | |
01 | 02 | The Doctrine Of Signatures | 19990120 | Eighty per cent of the world's population still relies on folk remedies, and most of the pills and potions produced by pharmaceutical companies have natural origins. Perhaps herbalism has more to teach us than we thought. | |
01 | 03 | The Doors Of Perception | 19990127 | In the Rig Veda as well as in accounts of the Norse beserkers, soma, the divine mushroom, was revered for its ability to create visions and for giving the sensation of flight. Nowadays, it is more commonly known as the fly agaric toadstool. | |
01 | 04 | Easing The Pain | 19990203 | Although opium and cannabis may be firmly associated in most people's minds with drug culture, they also fulfil an important role as painkillers. Michael O'donnell traces the development of analgesics and looks ahead to the intriguing possibility of doctors harnessing the body's own built-in painkillers. | |
01 | 05 | Of Microbes And Men | 19990210 | The antibiotics we now take for granted originally arose out of ruthless chemical warfare between fungi and bacteria. Dr Michael O'donnell looks at life from a fungus's point of view and discovers how they may hold the key to a treasure chest of new drugs. | |
01 | 06 LAST | A Future Herbal | 19990217 | Mainstream medicine is finally rediscovering the value of plants as a source of drugs. Dr Michael O'donnell asks what role traditional and new plant remedies will play in the 21st century. | |
02 | 01 | The Serpent's Tale | 20010327 | 20011016 | Venomous snakes are known - and feared - for their power to kill. Yet they also have the power to heal, as the many patients who have taken heart or circulatory drugs based on their venoms can testify. |
02 | 02 | Blood Suckers And Flesh Eaters | 20010403 | 20011023 | He finds out how leeches and maggots are being used in medicine today. |
02 | 03 | Sweet Cures And Stings | 20010410 | 20011030 | He finds that, after 3,000 years of use in folk medicine, the value of honey is only just being rediscovered by modern practitioners. |
02 | 04 LAST | The Nature Of Medicine | 20010417 | 20011106 | Animal behaviour can be valuable in diagnosis, in pointing to new sources of drugs and in giving new insights into the nature of medicine itself. |