Posts tagged drugs

When I worked in downtown Boston one of my favorite lunchtime outings was a walk to the corner of the Public Garden where stands the lovely and oddly orientalist Ether Monument, commemorating the pioneering demonstration of the surgical anesthetic at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-1840s. Ether had been around and in use for a long time, but had previously been condemned by the medical establishment. Its "discovery" represented a cultural rather than technological innovation—perhaps rendering the monument (and MGH's preserved Ether Dome museum) more crucial than it might at first seem. Indeed, its use of Biblical texts from Isaiah ("This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts which is wonderful and excellent in working") and Revelation (see title) presumably was intended to undermine the lingering view that dulling physical pain contradicted God's intentions.

re: drugs, medicine, monuments, parks, technology and change

Nate:

What the great moment in the Ether Dome really marked was something less tangible but far more significant: a huge cultural shift in the idea of pain. Operating under anesthetic would transform medicine, dramatically expanding the scope of what doctors were able to accomplish. What needed to change first wasn’t the technology - that was long since established - but medicine’s readiness to use it.

Before 1846, the vast majority of religious and medical opinion held that pain was inseparable from sensation in general, and thus from life itself. Though the idea of pain as necessary may seem primitive and brutal to us today, it lingers in certain corners of healthcare, such as obstetrics and childbirth, where epidurals and caesarean sections still carry the taint of moral opprobrium. In the early 19th century, doctors interested in the pain-relieving properties of ether and nitrous oxide were characterized as cranks and profiteers. The case against them was not merely practical, but moral: They were seen as seeking to exploit their patients’ base and cowardly instincts. Furthermore, by whipping up the fear of operations, they were frightening others away from surgery and damaging public health.

The “eureka moment” of anesthesia, like the seemingly sudden arrival of many new technologies, was not so much a moment of discovery as a moment of recognition: a tipping point when society decided that old attitudes needed to be overthrown. It was a social revolution as much as a medical one: a crucial breakthrough not only for modern medicine, but for modernity itself. It required not simply new science, but a radical change in how we saw ourselves.

How to do everything you can to avoid being a child of grace: the entitled and the striver fuse in the Adderall-dependent overachiever. Notice the strenuous managing downward of expectations in the last quote of this excerpt—the "enhancement" actually achieved by people who use these pharmaceuticals seems to be slight indeed. For those with genuine deficits these drugs may be of great value, just as cosmetic surgery is a gift to those with real disfigurement. But for others "cosmetic neurology" is likely to be no more permanent than Botox, no more truly transformative, and just as painfully obvious to the rest of us. And like cosmetic surgery, it is all too likely to become our culture's next false god.

re: drugs, grace, universities, work

Andy:

“One of the most impressive features of being a student is how aware you are of a twenty-four-hour work cycle. When you conceive of what you have to do for school, it’s not in terms of nine to five but in terms of what you can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals in a variety of realms—social, romantic, sexual, extracurricular, résumé-building, academic commitments.” Alex was eager to dispel the notion that students who took Adderall were “academic automatons who are using it in order to be first in their class, or in order to be an obvious admit to law school or the first accepted at a consulting firm.” In fact, he said, “it’s often people”—mainly guys—“who are looking in some way to compensate for activities that are detrimental to their performance.” He explained, “At Harvard, at least, most people are to some degree realistic about it. . . . I don’t think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. I think they’re aiming to be among the best. Or maybe not even among the best. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise.”