The insights may lead to a new class of pain killers. The skeletal remains of a young girl thought to be giving birth. A gray, carbonized material. The treasures of a tomb near Jerusalem tell a tale. Some 1,600 years ago, researchers suspect that the girl consumed the gray substance to relieve labor pains.
Researchers say it's remnants of marijuana.
For years, scientists were uncertain if scattered references to the compound's influence on pain were mere pipe dreams or the real thing. Now careful studies on animals are showing that indeed substances similar to or derived from marijuana, known as cannabinoids, can kill pain by disrupting pain signals in the nervous system. Advances in the understanding of how cannabinoids work in the nervous system. In the past, hard experimental evidence showing that cannabinoids could relieve pain didn't exist. Most incidences were anecdotal.