Opioids and Pain Relief

Presents 14 papers from the second conference sponsored by the John C. Liebeskind History of Pain Collection (held in August of 2000). The conference brought together scientists and historians in order to examine the history of the opioids--opium, morphine, heroin, and others--as a "Janus drug," showing two faces of therapeutics on the one hand and addiction and degradation on the other. The focus is on the use of opioids within medicine and the growth of scientific understanding about them and their impact on human beings.