0:00:00.825,0:00:02.723
A few years ago,

0:00:02.747,0:00:06.293
my mom developed rheumatoid arthritis.

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Her wrists, knees and toes swelled up,[br]causing crippling, chronic pain.

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She had to file for disability.

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She stopped attending our local mosque.

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Some mornings it was too painful[br]for her to brush her teeth.

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I wanted to help.

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But I didn't know how.

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I'm not a doctor.

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So, what I am is a historian of medicine.

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So I started to research[br]the history of chronic pain.

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Turns out, UCLA has an entire[br]history of pain collection

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in their archives.

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And I found a story --[br]a fantastic story --

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of a man who saved -- rescued --[br]millions of people from pain;

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people like my mom.

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Yet, I had never heard of him.

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There were no biographies[br]of him, no Hollywood movies.

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His name was John J. Bonica.

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But when our story begins,

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he was better known as[br]Johnny "Bull" Walker.

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It was a summer day in 1941.

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The circus had just arrived[br]in the tiny town of Brookfield, New York.

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Spectators flocked to see[br]the wire-walkers, the tramp clowns --

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if they were lucky, the human cannonball.

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They also came to see the strongman,[br]Johnny "Bull" Walker,

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a brawny bully who'd pin you for a dollar.

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You know, on that particular day,[br]a voice rang out

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over the circus P.A. system.

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They needed a doctor urgently,[br]in the live animal tent.

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Something had gone wrong[br]with the lion tamer.

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The climax of his act had gone wrong,

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and his head was stuck[br]inside the lion's mouth.

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He was running out of air;

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the crowd watched in horror

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as he struggled and then passed out.

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When the lion finally did relax its jaws,

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the lion tamer just slumped[br]to the ground, motionless.

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When he came to a few minutes later,

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he saw a familiar figure hunched over him.

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It was Bull Walker.

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The strongman had given the lion tamer[br]mouth-to-mouth, and saved his life.

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Now, the strongman hadn't told anyone,

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but he was actually[br]a third-year medical student.

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He toured with the circus[br]during summers to pay tuition,

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but kept it a secret[br]to protect his persona.

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He was supposed to be[br]a brute, a villain --

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not a nerdy do-gooder.

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His medical colleagues didn't[br]know his secret, either.

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As he put it, "If you were[br]an athlete, you were a dumb dodo."

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So he didn't tell them about the circus,

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or about how he wrestled professionally[br]on evenings and weekends.

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He used a pseudonym like Bull Walker,

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or later, the Masked Marvel.

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He even kept it a secret that same year,

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when he was crowned[br]the Light Heavyweight Champion

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of the world.

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Over the years, John J. Bonica[br]lived these parallel lives.

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He was a wrestler;

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he was a doctor.

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He was a heel;

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he was a hero.

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He inflicted pain,

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and he treated it.

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And he didn’t know it at the time,[br]but over the next five decades,

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he'd draw on these dueling identities

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to forge a whole new way[br]to think about pain.

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It'd change modern medicine[br]so much so, that decades later,

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Time magazine would call him[br]pain relief's founding father.

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But that all happened later.

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In 1942, Bonica graduated[br]medical school and married Emma,

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his sweetheart, whom he had met[br]at one of his matches years before.

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He still wrestled in secret -- he had to.

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His internship at New York's[br]St. Vincent's Hospital paid nothing.

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With his championship belt,[br]he wrestled in big-ticket venues,

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like Madison Square Garden,

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against big-time opponents,

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like Everett "The Blonde Bear" Marshall,

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or three-time world champion,[br]Angelo Savoldi.

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The matches took a toll on his body;

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he tore hip joints, fractured ribs.

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One night, The Terrible Turk's big toe[br]scratched a scar like Capone's

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down the side of his face.

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The next morning at work,[br]he had to wear a surgical mask to hide it.

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Twice Bonica showed up to the O.R.[br]with one eye so bruised,

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he couldn't see out of it.

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But worst of all were[br]his mangled cauliflower ears.

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He said they felt like two baseballs[br]on the sides of his head.

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Pain just kept accumulating in his life.

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Next, he watched his wife go[br]into labor at his hospital.

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She heaved and pushed, clearly in anguish.

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Her obstetrician called[br]out to the intern on duty

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to give her a few drops of ether[br]to ease her pain.

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But the intern was a young guy,[br]just three weeks on the job --

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he was jittery, and in applying the ether,

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irritated Emma's throat.

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She vomited and choked,[br]and started to turn blue.

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Bonica, who was watching all this,[br]pushed the intern out of the way,

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cleared her airway,

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and saved his wife[br]and his unborn daughter.

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At that moment, he decided[br]to devote his life to anesthesiology.

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Later, he'd even go on to help develop[br]the epidural, for delivering mothers.

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But before he could focus on obstetrics,

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Bonica had to report for basic training.

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Right around D-Day,

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Bonica showed up[br]to Madigan Army Medical Center,

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near Tacoma.

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At 7,700 beds, it was one of the largest[br]army hospitals in America.

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Bonica was in charge[br]of all pain control there.

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He was only 27.

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Treating so many patients,[br]Bonica started noticing cases

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that contradicted everything[br]he had learned.

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Pain was supposed to be[br]a kind of alarm bell -- in a good way --

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a body's way of signaling an injury,[br]like a broken arm.

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But in some cases,

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like after a patient had a leg amputated,

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that patient might still complain[br]of pain in that nonexistent leg.

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But if the injury had been treated, why[br]would the alarm bell keep ringing?

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There were other cases in which there[br]was no evidence of an injury whatsoever,

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and yet, still the patient hurt.

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Bonica tracked down all the specialists[br]at his hospital -- surgeons,

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neurologists, psychiatrists, others.

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And he tried to get[br]their opinions on his patients.

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It took too long, so he started organizing[br]group meetings over lunch.

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It would be like a tag team of specialists[br]going up against the patient's pain.

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No one had ever focused on pain[br]this way before.

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After that, he hit the books.

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He read every medical textbook[br]he could get his hands on,

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carefully noting every mention[br]of the word "pain."

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Out of the 14,000 pages he read,

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the word "pain" was[br]on 17 and a half of them.

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Seventeen and a half.

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For the most basic, most common,[br]most frustrating part of being a patient.

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Bonica was shocked -- I'm quoting him,

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he said, "What the hell kind of conclusion[br]can you come to there?

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The most important thing[br]from the patient's perspective,

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they don't talk about."

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So over the next eight years,[br]Bonica would talk about it.

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He'd write about it; he'd write[br]those missing pages.

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He wrote what would later be known[br]as the Bible of Pain.

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In it he proposed new strategies,

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new treatments using[br]nerve-block injections.

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He proposed a new institution,[br]the Pain Clinic,

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based on those lunchtime meetings.

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But the most important thing[br]about his book

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was that it was kind of an emotional[br]alarm bell for medicine.

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A desperate plea to doctors[br]to take pain seriously

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in patients' lives.

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He recast the very purpose of medicine.

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The goal wasn't to make patients better;

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it was to make patients feel better.

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He pushed his pain agenda for decades,

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before it finally took hold[br]in the mid-'70s.

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Hundreds of pain clinics sprung up[br]all over the world.

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But as they did -- a tragic twist.

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Bonica's years of wrestling[br]caught up to him.

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He had been out of the ring[br]for over 20 years,

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but those 1,500 professional bouts[br]had left a mark on his body.

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Still in his mid-50s, he suffered[br]severe osteoarthritis.

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Over the next 20 years[br]he'd have 22 surgeries,

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including four spine operations,

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and hip replacement after hip replacement.

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He could barely raise[br]his arm, turn his neck.

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He needed aluminum crutches to walk.

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His friends and former students[br]became his doctors.

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One recalled that he probably[br]had more nerve-block injections

0:10:02.149,0:10:04.727
than anyone else on the planet.

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Already a workaholic,[br]he worked even more --

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15- to 18-hour days.

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Healing others became more[br]than just his job,

0:10:14.455,0:10:17.177
it was his own most effective[br]form of relief.

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"If I wasn't as busy as I am,"[br]he told a reporter at the time,

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"I would be a completely disabled guy."

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On a business trip to Florida[br]in the early 1980s,

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Bonica got a former student to drive[br]him to the Hyde Park area in Tampa.

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They drove past palm trees[br]and pulled up to an old mansion,

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with giant silver howitzer cannons[br]hidden in the garage.

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The house belonged to the Zacchini family,

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who were something like[br]American circus royalty.

0:10:54.229,0:10:56.802
Decades earlier, Bonica had watched them,

0:10:56.826,0:10:59.713
clad in silver jumpsuits and goggles,

0:10:59.737,0:11:03.505
doing the act they pioneered --[br]the Human Cannonball.

0:11:04.772,0:11:07.847
But now they were like him: retired.

0:11:09.267,0:11:12.838
That generation is all dead[br]now, including Bonica,

0:11:12.862,0:11:15.805
so there's no way to know exactly[br]what they said that day.

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But still, I love imagining it.

0:11:19.233,0:11:22.486
The strongman and the human[br]cannonballs reunited,

0:11:22.510,0:11:24.963
showing off old scars, and new ones.

0:11:25.802,0:11:28.058
Maybe Bonica gave them medical advice.

0:11:28.082,0:11:33.408
Maybe he told them what he later[br]said in an oral history,

0:11:33.432,0:11:39.338
which is that his time in the circus[br]and wrestling deeply molded his life.

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Bonica saw pain close up.

0:11:45.236,0:11:47.236
He felt it. He lived it.

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And it made it impossible[br]for him to ignore in others.

0:11:53.449,0:11:56.563
Out of that empathy, he spun[br]a whole new field,

0:11:56.587,0:11:59.699
played a major role in getting[br]medicine to acknowledge pain

0:11:59.723,0:12:00.975
in and of itself.

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In that same oral history,

0:12:04.563,0:12:07.072
Bonica claimed that pain

0:12:07.096,0:12:11.353
is the most complex human experience.

0:12:12.215,0:12:16.029
That it involves your past life,[br]your current life,

0:12:16.053,0:12:18.243
your interactions, your family.

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That was definitely true for Bonica.

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But it was also true for my mom.

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It's easy for doctors to see my mom

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as a kind of professional patient,

0:12:34.652,0:12:38.470
a woman who just spends her days[br]in waiting rooms.

0:12:39.714,0:12:42.605
Sometimes I get stuck seeing her[br]that same way.

0:12:45.076,0:12:47.043
But as I saw Bonica's pain --

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a testament to his fully lived life --

0:12:51.623,0:12:56.130
I started to remember all the things[br]that my mom's pain holds.

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Before they got swollen and arthritic,

0:13:02.162,0:13:05.477
my mom's fingers clacked away

0:13:05.501,0:13:08.399
in the hospital H.R. department[br]where she worked.

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They folded samosas for our entire mosque.

0:13:14.734,0:13:18.435
When I was a kid, they cut my hair,

0:13:18.459,0:13:20.911
wiped my nose,

0:13:20.935,0:13:22.585
tied my shoes.

0:13:29.832,0:13:31.157
Thank you.

0:13:31.181,0:13:38.000
(Applause)