How Chillies Can Be Used to Treat Pain

Humans are, essentially, sadomasochists. 

For more 600 years we have sought out, cultivated, eaten, applied to our skin and even weaponised a chemical capable of making us feel heat and pain. Heat, it seems, is desirable. Whether in the kitchen or the bedroom, we have embraced the volcanic properties of the chilli pepper to enhance our food and spice up our love lives. But in The Pain Detective, published on Mosaic, chillies crop up unexpectedly. In the film, they feature as a component of a medically manufactured, super-hot patch being gingerly applied to Colin Froy's feet – not to inflict pain but, curiously, to diminish it. What is it about chillies that allows them to be both master and servant of pain? In an attempt to understand the heat properties of the wildly varied and abundant chilli, American pharmacist Wilbur Lincoln Scoville sought a measure of hotness that was more standardised and reproducible than the universal 'hand fanning' used to indicate too much heat. By 1912, Scoville had devised a scale to measure the sensation of chill intensity.
 The Scoville scale has been used ever since to rate the potency of chillies.