And thereof made the mother of Mankind.”
The Dawn of Anæsthesia
Thus a sixteenth century poet quaintly describes, and draws an impression of, from sacred records, the first operation tempered by anæsthesia. It has been claimed that in the “deep sleep” that the Creator “caused to fall upon Adam” is the germ of the idea of anæsthesia that has come down to us from the dim ages of the past. It is probable that primitive man employed digital compression of the carotid arteries to produce anæsthesia, as the aboriginal inhabitants of some countries do to-day. According to Caspar Hoffmann, this method was practised by the antient Assyrians before performing the operation of circumcision. Curiously enough the literal translation of the Greek and Russian terms for the carotid is “the artery of sleep.”
Early Egyptian anæsthetics
The antient Egyptians are believed to have used Indian hemp and the juice of the poppy to cause a patient to become drowsy before a surgical operation. Pliny relates that they applied to painful wounds a species of rock brought from Memphis, powdered, and moistened with sour wine, which is the first record we have of local anæsthesia with carbonic acid gas.
The “Wine of the Condemned”
The “sorrow-easing drug” which, as we are told in the fourth book of the “Odyssey,” was given by Helen to Ulysses and his comrades, probably consisted of poppy juice and Indian hemp. It is indeed actually stated that she learned the composition from Polydamnia, the wife of Thone, in Egypt. It is possible also that the “wine of the condemned,” mentioned by the prophet Amos, may have been a preparation of these drugs.
Mandragora (the Phallus of the Field)
Inscribed in cuneiform characters and in Egyptian hieroglyphics ca. 3000 B.C.