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The show was No, No, Nanette, which became one of the biggest hits in Broadway history, making back Frazee’s investment many times over, and securing him among the ranks of the most successful Broadway producers.

So Frazee got more than his money’s worth for that washed-up and bloated pitcher.

Right?

Wrong.

As it turned out, that pitcher, now a fielder, still had most of his best hitting years ahead of him, hitting fifty-four homers in the next year alone (almost twice as many as his record-breaking previous year on the Red Sox), and breaking many other records over the following twelve seasons with the Yankees. And as to him being a washed up has-been pitcher, the “Babe,” as he was known to his fans (or, more correctly, George Herman Ruth) pitched in only five more games (all credited wins).

Ruppert didn’t buy him to pitch.

He bought him to hit, and hit he did.

He became the greatest drawing card in baseball history, guaranteeing sellouts at Yankee games home and away, building box-office and concession sales more than enough to finance twenty Broadway shows.

And to add insult to injury, Frazee’s Red Sox never managed to recover their dominance.

Thus, after four pennants and four World Series championships since the team’s major league inception in 1901, the Boston Red Sox did not win another pennant until 1940 and failed to win a World Series for the rest of the twentieth century.

All because of “the curse of the bambino” and a Broadway show by the name of No, No, Nanette.

You Created a Wonder Drug?

In the fast-developing world of medicine we often expect near-miraculous results. The problem is when the scientists begin to believe their own press and fail to think through the consequences of their discoveries.

HEINRICH DRESER

GERMANY, 1897

Edward E. Kramer

The elimination of pain has been a quest of man from the beginning of time. Early research was done using the flora and fauna around them. In ancient times, the Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Romans sought out fish that were able to produce electric shocks, figuring that getting shocked by one of these fish could ease pain. Such treatments were short in duration, and occasionally accompanied by sharp (and painful) teeth marks.

In one remedy, arthritis was treated by putting a loose bag over the affected arm or leg, filling the bag with the dirt and ants from an ant bed, then tying the bag shut so the ants couldn’t escape. The arm or leg was left in the bag for two or three hours while the ants bit the patient. Another remedy for arthritis involved daily bee stings.

Plants were popular sources of pain remedies in just about every culture on earth. Leaves, roots and bark were boiled and beaten and ground into teas, pastes, poultices, and ointments to ease the pain that afflicted everyone at one time or another. The white poppy provided one of the strongest painkillers in nature’s pharmacy. Its unripe seeds were dried to produce a “juice,” or in Greek — opium. The first reference to opium in history appears in the writings of Theophrastus in the third century B.C.E.

Arabian traders introduced the drug to the Orient, where it was employed mainly for the control of dysentery. In the fourth century, Hilary, the bishop of Poitiers, was exiled to the Orient by the emperor Constantius. It was there that he first wrote about drugs that lulled the soul to sleep. Apuleius, a compiler of medical literature in the fifth century, wrote of the drug “if anyone is to have a limb mutilated, burnt, or sawn, he may drink a half ounce with wine, and whilst he sleeps the member may be cut off without any pain or sense.”

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, science took a backseat to religion. The soul was viewed as far more important than the body, and medical treatment virtually vanished. Hospitals became places where the sick were cared for, until they recovered or died. Many classic Greek and Roman medical texts were destroyed because they were seen as heretical.

In the mid-to late-1800S, opium became a fairly