Knock-out discoveries

BEFORE anaesthetics, preparing a patient for surgery involved brandy or a blow to the head. Surgeons needed to be strong and fast. One boasted he could cut off a leg in less than 30 seconds. A slight mishap occurred when he attempted to beat the record, removing a testicle and two fingers - the patient's, not his - in his haste.

Before watching the first in the Medical Mavericks series, I'd have bet that a programme about anaesthetics would send me to sleep, but this was a marvellously entertaining account of discoveries that helped lay the foundations for modern medicine.

Presenter Michael Mosley told how pioneers tested out new procedures on themselves. Some didn't even realise what they'd discovered. Nitrous oxide was used as a recreational drug with the gas collected in a green silk bag and inhaled, inducing laughter. It made you feel drunk but without a hangover (sounds like alcoholics should get it on the National Health).

It also dulled pain, Humphrey Davy noted. But he didn't take the idea further and apply it to medicine. That was left to American dentist Horace Wells after he saw a man on laughing gas cut his knee but feel no pain.

Alas, when he used nitrous oxide as a means of pain-free surgery, the demonstration in front of the medical community went wrong and he was discredited.

William Morton - a brash, vulgar entrepreneur or "sleazebag in today's terms" - turned to ether to knock out patients. His demonstration went well and, within 30 days, ether was being used in operations throughout Europe.

In Scotland, James Young Simpson championed using chloroform in surgery, particularly for pain-free childbirth. Only later did doctors realise that it could be dangerous.

Simpson became rich, famous and knighted. Morton never got any money or credit for introducing ether as the foundation of modern gas anaesthetics. He died penniless. Wells, too, met a nasty end - after throwing acid at two prostitutes, he cut himself and bled to death.

As for muscle relaxants, we can thank Freud, whose experiments with cocaine (numbing his eye with the drug and then poking it with a sharp knife) led to the widespread use of non-addictive offspring such as novocaine.

He went off to invent psychoanalysis. Amateur shrinks - gossip writers, tattoo artist, dancing teacher, photographers and a former boyfriend - assembled to comment on the transformation of the former Spice Girl from spotty teenager to a woman with a "slightly big skeletal-shaped head, pert pair of bosoms and a seven-year-old girl's body".

Anyone expecting a serious discussion on whether she's too thin would've been disappointed. Those wanting a disgracefully tacky head-to-toe assessment of Mrs Beckham couldn't have asked for more.

Her former dance teacher was a real find. "This is the dance studio where she first learnt to dance. She did her ballet, modern tap, drama, music theatre. You name it, she did it," she said.

"See I didn't mention singing. Is that very noticeable. Are you still filming?"

Horrible Histories: Awful Egyptians, Darlington Civic Theatre

BRINGING history to life is always a good idea, although some youngsters in last night's audience were startled by an Egyptian mummy stumbling through the auditorium.

As is usual in Horrible Histories, live actors enthusiastically relate the stories which, in the second half, are illustrated with 3-D effects. I sat there looking like Michael Caine in my special 3-D specs, waiting for the mummy's head to explode and cover everyone with gore, but it didn't happen.

Perhaps the producers thought it was scary enough already, but two people had told me the head definitely exploded in earlier versions. There was a cobra that reared up in your face, a death mask and a mummified corpse with trailing bandages that flew about and then swooped at you. When the great statue of Ramasses collapsed, the apparently flying debris had everyone ducking and diving - great fun.

The three principal actors did a good job keeping the kids interested with singing, dancing and kid-type jokes which went down well. Alison Fitzjohn, in particular, has the knack of doing the playground stuff without patronising; seven-year-old Emily, my assistant for the evening, firmly declared that she liked her the best. The part that seemed to lose the youngsters' attention, to my surprise, was the process of preparing a body for mummification. Even the yards of intestine being yanked from the dummy's abdomen didn't seem to hold any fascination. Too much blood and guts at home, I suppose. I enjoyed it, anyway.

l Awful Egyptians/Ruthless Romans alternating until Saturday. Box Office 01325-486555

Sue Heath