[Akiko Yosano, the famous Japanese poet and writer, is the first lady who experienced labor analgesia in Japan?].

There have been some records of labor analgesia with intravenous or rectal anesthetics since 1925. It is widely believed that labor epidural analgesia in Japan started to become popular after the World War II (1939-1945). However, the author found that Akiko Yosano, a well-known Japanese female poet and writer, had labor analgesia for her 5th son as early as 1916. She was given a mixture of an opioid alkaloid and scopolamine and had painless labor and delivery. She took this experience as a pleasant surprise and described "Never once, had I screamed or feel sweaty during my labor". She loved this comfortable and easy labor so much that she had it again for her 6th son in 1917. Her obstetrician was Dr. Yuzo Ohmi, who had studied in Munich University from 1910 to 1913. He brought this miracle painkiller from Germany to Japan and gave it to her for the first time in Japan. Akiko's husband, Tekkan Yosano, met Dr. Ohmi on a ship to Marseilles in 1911. Then, they and Akiko promoted friendship in Munich and Japan. Her labor experience and friendship with Dr. Ohmi are described in her collected essays "Warera-naniwo-motomuruka? (What do we long for?)" and "Ai-Risei-oyobi-yuhki (Love, Reason, and Bravery)". Dr. Ohmi's wife became a pupil of Akiko.

The making of "truth serum".

This essay reconstructs a social and cultural history of "truth serum" in America during the 1920s and 1930s, identifying the intellectual ingredients of the idea of a physiological "truth technique," and examining why it seemed to meet an urgent need. It argues that truth serum had the patina of modern science but produced a phenomenon that could be understood and evaluated by every man. It therefore offered the public a technique with the benefits of expertise but without its attendant costs to lay authority. The paper also argues that truth serum helped develop an account of memory as a permanent record of experience, accessible through altered states of mind. This view contributed to the production of a public understanding of memory that both diverged from previous claims about memory and recall, and ran counter to the direction of current psychological research. It thus helped lay the groundwork for claims about memory permanence and scientific recall techniques later in the twentieth century.

Scophedal (SEE) was it a fad or a miracle drug?

The German firm E. Merck released in 1928, an injectable mixture of scopolamine, oxycodone, and ephedrine under the name SEE. This drug, renamed Scophedal in 1942 caused deep and prolonged analgesia, sedation, euphoria and amnesia without significant respiratory or circulatory depression. Used extensively by the German and Central European surgeons in the 1930s, Scophedal enjoyed immense popularity with the Wehrmacht's medical officers treating frontline mass casualties during World War II. The use of Scophedal declined after 1945, and its production was discontinued in 1987. Despite the clinical enthusiasm it raised, SEE was never critically investigated. This drug may deserve a rigorous re-evaluation.

Love potions and the ointment of witches: historical aspects of the nightshade alkaloids.

BACKGROUND: Nightshade plants (Solanaceae) have been utilized as hallucinogenic drugs since antiquity in nearly every culture. The Solanaceae alkaloids, atropine and scopolamine, were the active substances in ointment of witches and medieval anesthetics, and in modern poisons. They are still currently used as hallucinogenic drugs. In poisonings, a dosage- and substance-dependent clinical picture occurs, with central and peripheral symptoms. Hallucinations are predominant in the middle dose range, which explains the drugs' earlier utilization for religious and prophetic purposes. Respiratory depression and arrest at high doses confirm the use of scopolamine as a lethal poison. Despite this, the nightshade alkaloids were utilized in clinical medicine in the 19th century. This is an overview of the cultural history of the nightshade alkaloids.

[The history of scopolamine--with special reference to its use in anesthesia]. / Zur Geschichte des Scopolamin--Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Anwendung in der Anästhesie.

Potions from plants, now known to contain scopolamine, were used in antiquity and the middle ages. However, wide-spread application of drugs for induction of insensibility to pain did not occur, probably because of side-effects and unpredictable dose-effect relationships. The word "scopolamine" is derived from "Scopolia carniolica", a solanaceous plant so named by Carl von Linné in honour of supposed discoverer, J. A. Scopoli. However, description of the effects and picture of the same plant have been found in A. P. Matthioli's work. Scopolamine is still widely used in anaesthetic practice and has enjoyed applicability in other medical fields. Unethical misuse of scopolamine has been known for a considerable time. Nowadays, the unwanted effects of scopolamine can specifically be antagonized by physostigmine. Scopolamine has been used in folk-lore rituals and enjoys great interest among ethno-pharmacologists.