Episode description
Episode description
Sexual performance, in particular impotence, is something that’s plagued chaps since they first crawled out of the swamp, rose up onto our hind legs, looked down, and bellowed WHY WON’T YOU WORK YOU BASTARD!
If there’s one thing you can rely on history to provide, it’s infinite examples of how men across the ages have laboured to enhance, increase, or at the very least enable performance…
Erectile dysfunction shows up in Egyptian tombs, Greek cup paintings, and even the Old Testament, with no limit to the wacky treatments they dreamed up to treat it. Not least, drinking the semen of hawks and eagles (how the hell do you get that stuff?).
On this very show, we’ve talked about some of these sophisticated, not-exactly-scientifically sound performance enhancers over the years from special elixirs to penile prostheses to testicle grafts. And of course, more mechanical means have also been tried for centuries.
But today’s fix is all in the realm of chemical intervention and actual science! There’s a first time for everything, huh?
1983 was the year that real science came to the fore, but not quite in the way we’ve come to expect. Renowned physiologist Sir Giles Skey Brindley made an impractical yet convincing discovery involving phentolamine injections and lacking animal models, he used himself as a guinea pig. Dressed in a loose tracksuit and with some prior preparatory injections, Brindley presented his findings in what has now come to be known as the infamous Brindley lecture, aka how NOT to communicate science.
Luckily, just 6 years after this exceptional performance the main scientific surprise discovery of today’s tale arises…
British Pfizer scientists Peter Dunn and Albert Wood had been researching a drug that they hoped would be good for treating high blood pressure, imaginatively calling it UK-92480. Early trials indicated little hope for its use as a heart disease treatment, nevertheless, a British patent was filed for sildenafil citrate, AKA Viagra, as a heart medication. Of course, we all know what viagra became famous for.
But Viagra’s erective effects were most emphatically a happy accident, and if it hadn’t been for an especially observant nurse, it may never have thrust its way into the spotlight.
Previous episodes mentioned:
Dr Serge Voronoff's Monkey Balls!
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard and The Origin of Performance Enhancing Drugs!
A Brief History of Penis Transplants
A Brief History of Aphrodisiacs!
Sources
The Little Blue Pill: An Oral History of Viagra The story of the drug that changed sex and made billions. By John Tozzi and Jared S Hopkins
The Viagra Craze - A pill to cure impotence? Afflicted men are saying Yesss! But is this the end of sex as we know it? By Bruce Handy
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,988274-3,00.html
How to give an unforgettable talk. By Chris Nickson https://litfl.com/how-to-give-an-unforgettable-talk/
Klotz, L, How (not) to communicate new scientific information: A memoir of the famous Brindley lecture - December 2005BJU International 96(7):956-7
DOI:10.1111/j.1464-410X.2005.05797.x
Revatio vs. Viagra: What's the Difference?
https://www.forhims.com/blog/revatio-vs-viagra-whats-difference
From Viagra to Valium, the drugs that were discovered by accident. By James Rudd Tue https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/11/from-viagra-to-valium-the-drugs-that-were-discovered-by-accident
30 Life-Changing Inventions That Were Totally Accidental
https://bestlifeonline.com/accidental-inventions/
Laurence Klotz, MD, FRCSC - Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, Ontario, Canada
https://grandroundsinurology.com/author/lklotz/
Before Viagra, There Were Penis Injections
https://science.howstuffworks.com/viagra3.htm
Viagra’s famously surprising origin story is actually a pretty common way to find new drugs
Katherine Ellen Foley
Kristen Gurtner, Amanda Saltzman, Kristi Hebert, and Eric Laborde, Erectile Dysfunction: A Review of Historical Treatments With a Focus on the Development of the Inflatable Penile Prosthesis. Am J Mens Health. 2017 May; 11(3): 479–486.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5675239/
Viagra: The little blue pill that could - Jacque Wilson, CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/27/health/viagra-anniversary-timeline/index.html
Brindley, G ”Cavernosal alpha-blockade: a new technique for investigating and treating erectile impotence" — Br J Psychiatry 1983 Oct;143:332-7. doi: 10.1192/bjp.143.4.332.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6626852/
https://royalsociety.org/people/giles-brindley-11138/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Brindley
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