Medical mavericks - the history of self-experimentation. Part 1, Anaesthesia.

The first in a four-part series, presented by Michael Mosley, looking at the history of medical self-experimentation. This part features people in medical history who have experimented with anaesthetics. Beginning with Humphrey Davey's experiments with nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in 1798 which led to his addiction to the drug we follow the story of anaesthesia through Horace Wells, William Morton's near-suicidal experiments with ether, Simpson's use of ether in child birth whose own self-experiments left him continually unwell but led to his discovery of chloroform, Freud's research into the local anaesthetic properties of cocaine and Frederick Prescott's experiments with muscle relaxants which nearly led to his death.