Besides mandragora, opium, Indian hemp, and other plants with narcotic properties already referred to, that were used for anæsthetic purposes in mediæval times, certain substances are mentioned by early writers that cannot be identified. Thus Albertus Magnus mentions an animal product, of which he says: “Any person smelling it falls down as if dead and insensible to pain,” but there is no reference to such a drug by other writers of the period.

Local anæsthetics in antient times

Local anæsthesia was not unknown during the middle ages, and Cardow recommends the inunction of a mixture consisting of “opium, celandine, saffron, and the marrow and fat of man, together with oil of lizards.” He also adds: “If the patient drinks wine in which the seeds of the patulica marina have been steeped for a week, it will prevent him feeling any pain.”

First men­tion of freez­ing as an anæs­the­tic

Bernard mentions that it was customary in Salerno to mix the crushed seeds of poppy and henbane, and apply them as a plaster, to deaden sensibility, to parts that were about to be cauterised; while Bartolinus states that local anæsthesia was sometimes produced by freezing, thereby foreshadowing the use of ether and ethyl chloride as local anæsthetics.

During the seventeenth century the belief in the narcotic draughts of the antients for producing anæsthesia appears to have waned, and few allusions are made to them until the middle of the eighteenth century, when fresh interest seems to have been excited in the subject. The famous Boerhaave is said to have used opium as an anæsthetic, both by inhalation of its vapour and also by internal administration in powder.Boerhaave’s anæsthetic According to Van Swieten, in his commentaries upon Boerhaave’s “Aphorisms,” the following is given as the recipe: “Oil of cinnamon, 2 drops; oil of cloves, 1 drop; citron peel, 2 grains; sugar, 2 drachms. Mix and add red coral, prepared, 1 drachm; pure opium, 2 grains. Mix for two doses, one of which is to be taken one hour before the operation, and the other one quarter hour before it, if the patient has not slept.”

An Operation in the Seventeenth Century

From a painting by Franz Hals

An operation on the King of Poland