Presenting Brian Dunleavy in The Conquest of Pain on the DuPont Cavalcade of America. Perhaps this holiday season you'll be opening your home to have some service for your girl who is far from home. In that case you may want to redecorate a room in a jiffy. You can do it with DuPont's Speed Easy wall finish. You thin Speed Easy with water, apply it with a large brush or roller, and in less than an hour the room is ready for use. Speed Easy is quick and easy. It's beautiful and long lasting too. Remember it's Speed Easy made by the DuPont Company. Maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Good evening. This is Walter Houston. Our cavalcade play tonight tells the story of the greatest battle humanity has ever fought, the fight against pain. Our star Brian Dunleavy is well known for his many portrayals of fighting men. But tonight he is going to tell us about fighting men of a different kind. Now the DuPont Company presents Brian Dunleavy as a narrator in Morton Wishingrad's radio play, The Conquest of Pain. Pain has followed man as closely as his shadow. Through the ages man has cried out in agony and prayed for release from physical torment. Until the weapon against pain was found, each man had to bear his suffering as best he could. Not too fast soldier, not too fast. Now that's better. That's the way. Easy. Pulse normal doctor, respiration normal. Very good. Pupil's dilated sir, he's under. Fine. Alright nurse, watch his pulse. Somewhere in France, far behind the lines, a wounded soldier lies upon an operating table. He feels no pain. For the heat of vapor is sweet in the air and thick in his lungs. For him now, the surgeon's knife holds no terror. When he wakes, he will have no recollection of this and perhaps the nurse will show him the bullet on a wad of white cotton and he will marvel. This is the conquest of pain. The anesthesia carries him beyond sleep to the threshold of death and it will bring him back without memory of where he has been. C2H5O, C2H5. An ethyl oxide made by the action of sulfuric acid on alcohol. A colorless, mobile, volatile, pleasant smelling liquid compound. C2H5O, C2H5. Ether. A prescription against agony. Do you take this chemist formula for granted now? Do you wait without apprehension in the anteroom of a surgeon and trustingly take his hand? Once that surgeon's hand was covered with blood. It was not so long ago. Only a few hundred years ago, the name of surgeon was an abomination on the tongue. Don't let him get away. Quick, put him on the table. No, please. Doctor, no. Dr. Rascatelli, hold his right leg. Yes, doctor. Paolo, his left leg. Ramualdi, you hold his arm. In the name of God, doctor, please. Please don't operate. Have you got him down? Yes, he's tied down. All right, now listen to me, Vanchero. There's gangrene in that leg. If you want to live, it's got to come off. I don't care, I'd rather die. Listen to me. Please. I'm the fastest surgeon in the kingdom of Naples. No. I can take that leg off in 37 seconds. Now, Paolo, my knife. Hold him steady. No. Don't let him move. Ready? Hold now. Hold. Yes, he was the great medieval surgeon. He was fast. But the sweat matted his hair, and the smell of fright hung like ammonia over the operating table. And when it was done, the surgeon wiped his face. Oh, Lord. I'm not a doctor. I'm a butcher. Of course, painless surgery was an illusion. Did not the great surgeons of the world proclaim it an impractical dream? Yet, nevertheless, impractical men groped for this anodyne against pain. In the 13th century, an alchemist spoke into the void. Notice the smell. Sweet. Sweet almost to cloying. Sweet vitriol. His name was Raymond Lully, alchemist. And for two centuries, men forgot the white Swedish fluid, which he called sweet vitriol. And then, one day, Theophrastus bombastus paracelsus von Hornheim, physician extraordinary, mixed some acid of sulfur with alcohol, heated it, and condensed the steam into a white fluid. And being of a curious turn of mind, paracelsus fed the white fluid to some chickens. Remarkable. Remarkable. Fast asleep. Hmm. Evidently, it has an agreeable taste, for they took it gladly. Now they're asleep. Remarkable. Paracelsus did not know how remarkable. It was only a short step to discovery, but a world in agony had to wait two and a half centuries until 1772, when the English nonconformist minister, Joseph Priestley, discovered another vapor. Nitrous oxide. I wonder. Suppose I try this gas on some animals. Yes. I wonder what would happen. Joseph Priestley never found out, for the mob wrecked his house and destroyed his laboratory. The gentleman of Europe forgot his experiment. Then Humphry Davy, who was young and important and obviously not the gentleman, sniffed some vapor in a test tube. So this is nitrous oxide. Why, it's amusing. It's very amusing. I like it, in fact. Mr. Priestley may call this nitrous oxide, but I call it laughing gas. And this young Englishman announced to the world that nitrous oxide possessed anesthetic properties. But the world refused to listen. It also refused to listen to Michael Faraday, who suggested that ether vapors could put people to sleep. And while the century lay wrecked in pain, nitrous oxide and ether became mere chemical curiosities. But in the little town of Jefferson, Georgia, in the year 1841, Dr. Carter Williamson Long remembered the ether parties of his student days and dusted off a flask of the stuff once called Sweet Vitriol. He's drunk! Croft and Long, don't you dare come near me, even if you are a doctor! Where's Carolyn? I've got to kiss her. Get out of my way, Jim Venable. I'm going to kiss her. I'm just trying to help you, old man. That was a nasty fall. Didn't seem so bad to... say... my knee. Well, I told you, you really banged that knee. Didn't you feel it? I didn't feel a thing, but it hurts like blazes now. I wonder... Jim. Well? You know, I've wanted to remove that growth on your neck for a long time. The answer is still no. Suppose I gave you ether. It has never been done before. That growth is mighty unsightly. Well... I knew you'd see it my way. Take off your coat, Jim Venable. I'm going to operate. With ether. And so, for a few brief hours, Dr. Crawford Williamson Long touched the hem of immortality. The operation was successful and painless, but the townspeople were offended, and the clergy was scandalized, and being both practical and amiable, young Dr. Long restored the flask of ether to his medicine cabinet, and the cries of pain emanating from his operating table reassured the people of Jefferson that the devil had once again been exorcised. Exit Dr. Crawford Williamson Long. Enter the principal characters. The stage is New England. Horace Wells, dentist. William Thomas Green Morton, dentist and medical student. Scene 1, Hartford, Connecticut, the month, December, the year 1844. Horace Wells is reading a newspaper. Any plans for tonight, my dear? Not that I can think of why. Well, there's to be a laughing gas exhibition in Union Hall. The paper says 12 men have volunteered to inhale the gas. Might be amusing. Probably a brawl. No, no, it says here, the gas will be administered only to gentlemen of the first respectability. The object is to make the entertainment in every respect a genteel affair. My dear, we're going. It was an amazing exhibition, Cooley. Did you feel the effects of the gas immediately? In about a minute, I'd say. Horace, it's cold and it's late. How long are you going to walk? I'm sorry, you fell, Cooley. Horace, I'm speaking to you. I can't get over it. When you fell, I thought you broke your leg. I never felled it. Horace! You know, I'm going to get some of that gas. You think that lecturer will give me some? I'm getting cold. I don't see why not. I hate you, Horace Wells. Did you say something, my dear? Well, I've never been so... Goodbye, Horace Wells. You can stand there and freeze, but I'm going home. What in the world ever brought that up? I'm sorry, Cooley. One second, my dear. I'm coming. Horace Wells crawled into bed, but he couldn't sleep. Like Crawford Long, of whom he had never heard, Horace Wells had made a striking observation. While his wife gently snored, he tossed on his pillow and impatiently waited for the dawn. December 11, 1844, was a gray, bleak day, but Horace Wells was unmindful of the cold. On December 11, 100 years ago today, he asked his friend, Johnny Riggs, who was also a dentist, to come to his office. Johnny, you like to pull teeth, don't you? When people let me, sure. Well, I've got some laughing gas in this rubber bag now. After I inhale it, you pull my second molar. Don't be a fool, Wells. Well, it's my tooth. Will you pull it, or shall I go somewhere else? Sit right down, Mr. Wells. It will be a very great pleasure. More water, Johnny. Here. You're not fooling me, Wells, are you? You swear you felt no pain? Johnny, I'm going to take a trip to Boston, see William Morton, my former partner. Johnny, this is a new era in tooth pulling. Sure. Here, take some more water. Oh, thanks. In Boston, Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, a disappointed dentist, was studying medicine under the talented but quick-tempered Dr. Charles Jackson. William Morton listened attentively to Horace Wells and was caught by his excitement. Together, the two dentists went to see Dr. Jackson. As Morton and I see a Dr. Jackson, it's the only way to find out. Oh, but it's dangerous. Suppose a patient died. You'd be guilty of murder. There's a Harvard student who's agreed to submit to an extraction before the medical faculty. All we want is your advice, Doctor. Oh, you know my advice, Morton. If you haven't any sense, you won't go through with it. You'll have to know. Dr. Jackson, we appreciate your advice, but we're going through with it. Morton and I are pulling that tooth at Harvard tomorrow. You're listening to the Conquest of Pain on the cavalcade of America, sponsored by E.I. DuPont Dinamours and company of Wilmington, Delaware, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. This evening's cavalcade is the story of the development of anesthesia and the conquest of pain and torments which have plagued mankind through the centuries. As our play continues, Horace Wells and his friend William Morton, two New England dentists in the year 1844, are about to demonstrate the use of nitrous oxide as an anesthetic for tooth extraction before the faculty of the Harvard Medical School. You nervous, Wells? Solidly. Don't worry, Morton. Do you want me to administer the gas? No, no, no, I'll do it. Gentlemen, Dr. Horace Wells is ready to begin. After the patient has received a quantity of the gas, the extraction will be performed without pain. It better be. It will. Proceed, Dr. Wells. How do you know when he's had enough? I don't know. Just take a chance. Hand me the forceps, Morton. There's no point in waiting. Thanks. Well, here goes. Oh! Oh, my jaw! It's a humpback! Horace Wells was hooted in the lecture hall. The quantity of nitrous oxide administered had been insufficient. He knew it now, and William Morton knew it. Horace Wells returned to the practice of dentistry. But William Morton was stubborn. Adversity had discouraged Crawford Long and partially deferred Horace Wells, but adversity only made William Morton more determined. He was an unusual man. On his honeymoon, he had brought along a skeleton to study human bone structure. Now he began experimenting with ether. His wife was outraged when he used caterpillars and worms as his subjects, and one day she entered his laboratory. Help! Sally! Sally, where are you? My husband is dead! William! William, speak to me! Oh, God, make him speak to me. William! Yes, Elizabeth. Where? Oh, thank God. Surely you were dead. Merely etherized, Elizabeth. Don't you ever do that again, William Morton. Are you sure you're all right? Elizabeth. You want some water? Pinch my thigh. What? Do it. A good pinch. There. Was it a good pinch? It most certainly was. Barely felt it. I think he could have pulled every tooth in my mouth a little while ago and I wouldn't have known. Elizabeth, this is what I've been looking for. I'm going to try it out. All I need is a patient. That's all, Elizabeth. A patient. I think that's my patient, Elizabeth. I'll see who it is. Who is it, Elizabeth? It's Mr. Eben Frost. Too big. Bad? Oh, terrible. You've got to get it out or the pain will drive me crazy. Right away, Eben. Say, what's that in her hand? Forcibly, Eben. I think my tooth has stopped hurting. Goodbye, Doctor. Wait a minute, Eben. Are you afraid of the operation? Yes, sir, E. How would you like something to take away the pain? What are you going to do? Hypnotize me? Something better. You want to try? What do I do? Sit in this chair. That's it. Now I'm going to pour some of this fluid on my handkerchief. There. Now you hold it to your nose and inhale. Breathe it in, Eben. Deep. I'm not sure if it's deep enough. That's the way. That's the way. It'll be all over in 30 seconds. Vamos. It will take you a minute or half into your mind. Breathe on. Come on. It's coconut juice. It's sweet scientistWHAT point à vous? There you are. I'm sorry Ata. Thank you. Overnight, something happened to William Morton. He was the man with a mission. He burned with religious zeal. His discovery belonged to medicine, to all humanity. He offered it to the physicians of Boston. They refused. Morton was incredulous. Incredulous and still stubborn. Finally, he lay in wait for the eminent and brilliant Professor John C. Warren of the Massachusetts General Hospital. And what makes you think I'll try this method? Everyone else has refused. I think you're different, Professor Warren. Don't flatter me, Dr. Morton. I'm like all the rest. No, you're not, Professor Warren. I know you've just come from an amputation. I'll stake my life on the guess that you'd give everything you own to get those shrieks out of your head. That's not a bad guess. But why should I trust you? Because you can't trust yourself to torture a patient unnecessarily. All right, Morton. Perhaps I'll live to regret it, but I'm willing to give your method a trial. Remember this day, October 16th, 1846. They wheeled the patient into the crowded amphitheater of the Massachusetts General Hospital amid deep silence. At Professor Warren's side stood the leading surgeons of Boston. Buried in the tears before him sat scores of expectant young students. Professor Warren glanced once more at the clock. The hour had come. Before beginning this operation, I wish to say a few words. I have been 40 years a surgeon in Boston. On every instance when the knife was applied to live tissue, there was pain. Now, a dentist of this city tells me that he has a preparation to do away with that pain. Is Dr. Morton here? Dr. William Morton? He got cold feet. I'm sorry, gentlemen. I presume Dr. Morton is otherwise engaged. Very well. We'll perform the operation without him, without using his anesthetic. Dr. Bigelow, will you assist me? Professor Warren. Professor, I'm sorry. Well, I'd given you up, Morton. We were going ahead without you. Terribly sorry, doctor. Gentlemen, I was delayed because I've worked all night until this moment to perfect my inhalator for ether. If you and Professor Warren are ready, I'll now proceed to administer the anesthetic. I'm ready, Morton. Here's the patient. Very well. Are you afraid? No, sir. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. You're a doctor. Take this tube in your mouth and breathe in. Breathe deeply. Go ahead. Not too fast. That's better, that's better. Just like that. Is the patient ready, Dr. Morton? Warren. Did that hurt you? Can you hear me? Did the needle hurt? I think you can begin to operate, Professor. The patient is ready. Dr. John C. Warren of the Massachusetts General Hospital begins the operation which will excise a vascular tumor from the neck of the patient while William T. Morton stands by. The learned surgeons crane their necks to see and the students stand on the benches waiting for the cry of pain which does not come. Gentlemen, this is no humbug. The art of surgery has been robbed of its terrors. October 16th, 1846. The beginning of an age without pain. And so the soldier sleeps under anesthesia and he feels no pain. Ours has been a triumph. The triumph of two dentists. The triumph of William Thomas Green Morton and Horace Wells and Crawford Long and Michael Faraday and Humphrey Davy and Joseph Priestley and a man called Paracelsus and Raymond Lully, the alchemist, deep in the 13th century. For science is a progression and while some stumble and others falter, each who labors lights a torch and when his arm is weary he passes the torch on. These are lamp lighters, the flame throwers and theirs is the triumph of life and the conquest of pain. Thanks to you Brian Dunleavy and to all other members of tonight's DuPont Cavalcade. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, especially the ladies in our audience, about nylon for stockings and other articles of clothing but perhaps you didn't know that chemically speaking there is a whole family of nylons. For example, nylon is also a plastic. They tell me that as a plastic it can be made into tubes or a covering for wire. It can be molded into finished parts for use in many industries. That's right isn't it, Gain? Yes, Walter, it is. For example, here's one way nylon can be used as a plastic. On battleships the telephones that control gunfire have no batteries or electrical generators because they might be put out of commission or catch fire during a battle. Their current is generated instead by the voices of the men speaking into them. These sound powered battle telephones, as they are called, have to be extremely sensitive which means their coils must be wound with a large amount of wire in a very small space. So the coil forms are molded of nylon plastic. Nylon coil forms with flanges only twelve one-thousandths of an inch thick successfully meet Navy specifications and nylon forms can stand temperatures all the way from 90 degrees below freezing to more than 250 above. Nylon is an outstanding plastic for certain kinds of valve seats and it's being used for anemometer cups, those whirly gigs you see on top of weather stations and airport control towers. Every time the cups whirl around they flex. Nylon stands up under this repeated flexing and nylon anemometer cups withstand the high temperature and dampness of the tropics. These uses of nylon as a plastic and other uses are one more reason why there will be no more nylon stockings until the War Production Board gives DuPont the green light. These various nylons also hold great promise for the future, for when the war is over you'll have nylon not only as yarn for stockings and slips and things like that, but as one of the newest and best plastics, nylon plastic. Another example of the way industrial research seeks new forms and new uses for a product to make it more valuable to the nation and its people. And another example of the DuPont company's better things for better living through chemistry. When we hear the word pioneers we usually think of men and women pitting their strength against the wilderness to open up a new land. But there had been other pioneers, men and women who pitted their strength against the wilderness of prejudice and ignorance to open up the horizons of our minds. Such a woman was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor, founder of the first hospital and medical school for women. Lovely Loretta Young will play the leading role in the doctor in Quinellon on next Monday's DuPont cavalcade of America. Incidentally, I am sure next week's story will inspire many nurses to answer our Army's urgent call for registered nurses. I hope those of you who are contemplating joining won't wait till next week because 10,000 are needed right now. Just remember, any nurse who enters the Army Nurse Corps will practice her profession where it will do the most good. I sincerely hope those of you who are registered nurses will write to the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C., or call at your nearest Red Cross chapter. Thank you and good evening. Tonight's star, Brian Dunleavy, may be seen in Paramount's motion picture, the Virginian, soon to be released. The music on tonight's cavalcade was composed and conducted by Robert Armbruster. This is Gain Whitman inviting you to tune in next week to the Doctor in Quinellon, starring Loretta Young. Brought to you by the EI DuPont Deana Moores Company of Wilmington, Delaware. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
