Nice read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_performance-enhancing_drugs_in_sportTexts going back to antiquity suggest that men have always tried to work harder or at least suffer less as they were doing so. When the fittest of a nation were selected as athletes or combatants, they were fed diets and given treatments considered beneficial. For instance, Scandinavian mythology says
Berserkers could drink a mixture called "butotens", perhaps prepared from the Amanita muscaria mushroom, to increase their physical power a dozen times at the risk of insanity.[5] In more recent times, the German missionary and doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote of Gabon in the early 19th century: "The people of the country can, having eaten certain leaves or roots, toil [pagayer] vigorously all day without feeling hungry, thirsty or tired and all the time showing a happiness and gaiety."[6]
A participant in an endurance walking race in Britain, Abraham Wood,
said in 1807 that he had used laudanum, or opium, to keep him awake for 24 hours while competing against Robert Barclay Allardyce.[7] By April 1877, walking races had stretched to 500 miles and the following year, also at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, London, to 520 miles. The Illustrated London News chided:
It may be an advantage to know that a man can travel 520 miles in 138 hours, and manage to live through a week with an infinitesimal amount of rest, though we fail to perceive that anyone could possibly be placed in a position where his ability in this respect would be of any use to him [and] what is to be gained by a constant repetition of the fact.[8]
