Allay’d; the wound was dried, and stanched the blood.
Iliad.
Gathering Mandragora
From an MS. of the XII century
From this interesting description of the manner in which the early Greek surgeons treated a wound, it is evident that, although they had no actual knowledge of anæsthetics, they had found from experience the advantage of cleansing the wound and applying an astringent and anodyne dressing to deaden sensibility to pain, which probably, unknown to them, also possessed antiseptic qualities.
Mandragora as an Anæsthetic
The anæsthetics of antient Greece
That the early Greeks also used certain methods for deadening sensibility to pain is evidenced by several of the antient writers. Pindar states “Machaon eased the sufferings of Philoctetes with a narcotic potion.” Theocritus also alludes to Lucina, the goddess of the obstetric art, as “pouring an insensibility to pain down all the limbs of a woman in the throes of labour.” Aphrodite, to assuage her grief for the death of Adonis, is said to have thrown herself on a bed of lettuce and mandragora.
There is no medicinal plant around which cluster more mysterious and quaint associations than mandragora. The Babylonians employed it more than 2000 years B.C., and a figure cut from the root was used at that early period as a charm against sterility. It is probable that the antient Hebrews also believed it to possess these properties, judging from the story of Rachel related in the book of Genesis. The early Egyptians employed mandragora, which they called the “phallus of the field,” as a medicinal agent, both as an anodyne and an anæsthetic, and also used it in many of their superstitious rites.