It is necessary and it is certainly beneficial that we should thus remind ourselves of the horrors which surrounded the surgeon so recently as sixty years ago. “Before the days of anæsthetics,” wrote an old patient to Simpson, in a letter which he treasured with pride—the writer was himself a medical man—“a patient preparing for an operation was like a condemned criminal preparing for execution. He counted the days till the appointed day came. He counted the hours of that day till the appointed hour came. He listened for the echo in the street of the surgeon’s carriage. He watched for his pull at the door bell; 92 for his foot on the stair; for his step in the room; for the production of his dreaded instruments; for his few grave words, and his last preparations before beginning. And then he surrendered his liberty and, revolting at the necessity, submitted to be held or bound, and helplessly gave himself up to the cruel knife.”.
It was, indeed, a monstrous ogre this giant Pain, holding the poor weak human creature in its merciless clutches, which Simpson even in his youthful days bethought himself to attack. It is well that we who are the heirs, should know how Simpson and those others whose names are ever associated with his, slew the monster, won the victory, and championed the human race forward into a land where further victories undreamt of by themselves are now being daily won.
Simpson searched into ancient history in order to ascertain the methods, if any, by which in remote and mediæval times surgeons sought to prevent the pain of operations. The most time-honoured method seems to have been by the internal administration of drugs, the chief one used being Indian hemp, which was well known in the East, and under one of its names haschish gave origin to the term assassin (strictly eater of haschish). A certain Arab Sheikh got together a band of followers to whom he administered haschish, which produced in them its usual effect—beautiful dreams of a delightful paradise. He induced them to believe so thoroughly in his power to gain for them at 93 death permanent entrance to this paradise that they obeyed all his ferocious and bloodthirsty behests. Thus these assassins became known as men obedient to their leader in any murderous enterprise. Indian hemp was, and still is, used as a luxury all over the East, as well as to annul pain, and was used by criminals doomed to torture or execution. Simpson thought the nepenthe of Homer was a preparation of this drug; he also refers to the fact that Herodotus relates that the Massagetæ inhaled the vapour of burning hemp to produce intoxication and pleasurable excitement.
Mandrake was used in a similar manner and for similar purposes as Indian hemp in the Middle Ages, but it fell into disuse on account of the fatal results that often followed. It is frequently referred to by Shakspeare both for its narcotic properties and for its fabulous power of uttering a scream when torn up by the roots, to hear which meant death or madness. Simpson cited also well-known passages from Shakspeare to prove that the practice of “locking up the spirits a time” was known to that poet.
In later days the intoxication produced by alcohol was taken advantage of, and instances of its use have been known in quite recent years in the Colonies, where both a surgeon and chloroform were out of reach.
No drug, however, was known to be of such value in producing anæsthesia as to be constantly used, and 94 many trials were made of other means, notably that of compressing the nerves supplying the part to be operated upon, but this was found to be too painful in itself. The stupor produced by compressing the carotid arteries—a method taken advantage of by the ruffians known as garotters—was also put in practice for a time during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it was found too barbarous a method even for those days.
Hypnotism was known to the Indians, Egyptians, and Persians at a very remote period, and may possibly have been used by them sometimes to produce anæsthesia for surgical purposes. Simpson was attracted by the words of the poet Middleton in his tragedy “Women, beware Women” (1617) where he says—
“I’ll imitate the pities of old surgeons
To this lost limb—who ere they show their art
Cast me asleep, then cut the diseased part.”