There are several passages in the Talmud which point to the fact that the practice of easing the pain of torture and death, by stupefying the sufferers, was a very antient one.
Thus it is stated: “If a man is led forth to death, he is given a cup of spiced wine to drink, whereby his soul is wrapped in night”; and again, “Give a stupefying drink to him that loseth his life, and wine to those that carry bitterness in their heart.”
In connection with crucifixion, which was a common punishment for malefactors among the Jews before the Christian era, with the sanction of the Sanhedrin, the women were wont to ease the terrible death agony of the sufferers by giving them something in the nature of a “wine of the condemned” upon a sponge. It is probable that the “wine mingled with myrrh” which, according to St. Mark, was offered to Christ before nailing Him upon the Cross, was indeed a narcotic draught, given with the object of lessening His sensibility to the agony.
The earliest reference to anæsthesia by inhalation is contained in the works of Herodotus, who states that the Scythians were accustomed to produce intoxication by inhaling the vapour of a certain kind of hemp, which they threw upon the fire or upon stones heated for the purpose. This was probably Cannabis indica, or Indian hemp, which was employed by Oriental races as an anæsthetic from very early times.
Anodyne poultices to deaden pain
At the siege of Troy the Greek army surgeons employed anodyne and astringent poultices to assuage the pain of the wounded. Thus Patroclus, when his dagger from the thigh of Euryphylus—
Cut out the biting shaft; and from the wound
With tepid water cleansed the clotted blood;
Then, pounded in his hands, the root applied
Astringent, anodyne, which all his pain