“Le marchand de la mort est mort,” or “the dealer of death is dead.” This is what a 55-year old Alfred Nobel read in his own obituary in 1888. His brother, Ludvig, had died recently in Cannes and a sloppy reporter thought that the famous Swedish inventor of dynamite had died instead. A case of mistaken identity not-withstanding, Nobel found out what the world really thought of him. A crisis of conscience and a visit to his lawyer later and he had created the world-famous Nobel Prizes. A great tale of redemption, right? Well, the story gets even more interesting. Huddle up and prepare for the tale of the world’s most explosive medicine.
Nitroglycerin is a chemical compound invented by the Torinese Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. He found the compound sweet to the taste and the cause of “violent headaches.” (You should remember this last part.) And yes, the only way he could have found this out was by tasting a mysterious substance he had just invented. My advice for those of you who are interested in going into research: don’t, it’s pretty dangerous. The market for sweet tasting drinks that cause severe headaches is quite small, but luckily for Sobrero this substance had another fun property. The substance was extremely volatile, so volatile that he didn’t want to work with it. Maybe he should have accepted his own judgment since continued testing caused him some extensive facial scarring.
A young Alfred Nobel, during a European tour, was of course fascinated by this dangerous chemical. Very explosive? Check. Pretty easy to make? Check. Extremely easy to accidentally detonate? Check. Sobrero’s boss cautioned against the use of this chemical, but being a profit-oriented man Nobel threw caution in the wind and acquired a 100,000 franc loan to develop nitroglycerin into a commercial product in 1850.
Right around this time a Constantin Hering also took an interest in this compound. And he found this headache-inducing aspect very interesting. Maybe this was even the most interesting part of the invention and it could be the cure of a disease! This could be the definitive cure for… headaches! Wait, what? He was so close, but so, so far away. You see, this accidental visionary did focus on the most interesting characteristic of this compound, namely the headache caused by its ingestion. However, this man was a homeopath and believed that like cures like. So if nitroglycerin causes headaches then a diluted solution would cure headaches. While this application had (and still has) basis in scientific literature, the compound became part of the standard kit of every homeopath.
Nobel was not involved with any of that and most likely did not even know that any of this was happening. He was too busy making nitroglycerin a commercial-grade explosive. His first major discovery was the detonator, a device to safely detonate nitroglycerin with a fuse. In 1864, he patented the detonator and his production method of nitroglycerin. This would have been a great year for him if it had not been for a family disaster. His brother, Emil Nobel, and several employees died in the explosion of a nitroglycerin factory.
Whilst the detonator had made the intentional explosion safe enough, the volatile nature of nitroglycerin made it impossible to work with. This of course was illustrated by the death of his brother. Now the search came for a substance that could make the compound safe for transport and handling. The popular story is that he dropped an Erlenmeyer with nitroglycerin on the floor of his work shed. Instead of dying or seriously getting hurt, nothing happened. This was to the great surprise of Nobel. There was dirt and straw on the ground which he hypothesized were the stabilizing agent. After figuring out where the dirt came from he found that diatomaceous earth from the river nearby was what he was looking for. This is probably not what really happened since the impact of the nitroglycerin with the ground would have caused an explosion either way…
So in 1867 he had invented the first relatively safe and easy-to-use explosive material since black powder which was invented in ninth century China. From the massive amounts of misinformation surrounding the myth of the foundation of the Nobel Prize it would be easy to assume that it was used primarily as a tool of war. However, it did not see much use in any war except to blow up bridges and other strategic structures. Its actual primary application was and still is in mining.
That’s all fine and dandy but why is this article in a medical faculty’s quarterly publication? Well, that is because nitroglycerin is a medicine with an important role in the treatment of angina pectoris (chest pains). This use was first described in 1858 by Alfred Field and afterwards some physicians experimented with the medicine. However, it was not until 1878 that William Murrel popularized its usage. Only four years later medical journals lauded its use as the best way to treat angina pectoris and even calling the withholding of this treatment “inhumane.”
While the medical scientists of the 19th century understand that it worked for angina pectoris patients they did not know why or how it worked. To be fair, the exact molecular pathway is not completely known to this day. To put it simply, the massive headaches that Sobrero and many of Nobel’s employees noticed was due to the potent vasodilation caused by nitroglycerin. This reduces the preload and reduces the arterial resistance, this literally takes the load of somebody’s heart.
Thus widespread medical application of nitroglycerin began well within the lifetime of Alfred Nobel. Maybe his development process and mass production helped the availability and affordability of the drug. But, in contrast to popular perception, he had no direct hand in the invention of nitroglycerin or its uses in the medical world. As if to illustrate this point there is the fact that in his later years he suffered from angina pectoris. In 1890 he was offered Trinitrin, which was the brand name of nitroglycerin as a drug at the time. He personally found this very ironic.
Was he not simply an evil man, intent on profiteering from the atrocities of war? Well, he probably wasn’t when he invented dynamite. This did change during the last ten years of his life. He developed rockets, cannons and other weapons technologies. He also successfully invented a type gunpowder which was to be used in machine guns. So yes, he did become “the Dealer of Death.” The obituary mentioned might have caused him to seek redemption or more likely his friendship with peace activist Bertha von Suttner. Also, he never really helped in the development of nitroglycerin as a medicine, he even rejected taking it for his chest pains. But, he sure as hell was a very interesting guy.