Recently a friend of the family had a heart attack. While he was in the hospital, they gave him nitroglycerin pills to stop the attack and ease his chest pains! I consider myself as having a rational mind, but the ingestion of explosives (no matter how small the amount) does not on the surface seem to be a great way to promote cardiovascular health! In fact, it would seem that nitro might have caused a few heart attacks (especially around the Fourth of July). How does nitroglycerin stop heart attacks?
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People nowadays are such wimps. If you’re looking for strong medicine, how can you do better than a high explosive? The nitroglycerin in the pills, patches, and sprays that heart patients use for angina (chest pain) is in fact the same stuff you find in dynamite–the residue the drug leaves on patients’ skin and clothing is often enough to set off airport bomb-sniffing machines. The medicinal dose is tiny and diluted with inert material, so it’s completely nonexplosive; even so, nitroglycerin is one medicine I’d hesitate to shake before use.
Laborers in Nobel’s factories were the first to feel nitroglycerin’s therapeutic effects. When they arrived at work each morning, those with heart problems found that their chest pains subsided (though almost everybody on the job noticed that sometimes their heads hurt like hell). Turned out the nitroglycerin vapor in the factory air was acting as a vasodilator, increasing blood flow both to the heart (which needed it, at least in the case of the angina sufferers) and to the head (which didn’t).
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
