The same author also adds,[[6]] in speaking of a kind of mandragora called morion, “They relate that a drachm of it being taken as a draught, or eaten in a cake or other food, causes infatuation, and takes away the use of the reason. The person sleeps without sense, in the attitude in which he ate it, for three or four hours afterwards. Medical men also use it when they have to resort to cutting or burning.”
In treating of mandragora, Pliny[[7]] remarks that the juice of the leaves is more powerful than the preparations made from the root. He says, “Some persons even die from a considerable draught. It has the power of causing sleep in those who take it. The dose is half a cyathus (six drachms). It is taken against serpents, and before cuttings and puncturings, lest they be felt. For these purposes it is sufficient for some persons to have sought sleep from the smell (of the medicine).”
Apuleius,[[8]] under the head mandragora, says, “If any one eat it he will immediately die, unless he be treated with butter and honey, and vomit quickly. Further, if any one is to have a limb mutilated, burnt, or sawn, he may drink half an ounce with wine, and whilst he sleeps the member may be cut off without any pain or sense.”
After reading the above passages from such well-known authors, it may be asked how it was that the practice of preventing the pain of surgical operations was entirely unknown just prior to 1846.
The reason, no doubt, was that the statement these passages contain was looked upon as a vulgar error of the period, which had imposed on the credulity of the authors. Dr. Woodville,[[9]] speaking of the use of mandragora by the ancients, says, “They employed it principally in continued watchings, and in those more painful and obstinate affections which were found to resist less powerful medicines.” He gives, in a foot note, a reference to the place in Dioscorides from which the passages above quoted are taken, and had he believed in the performance of operations without pain, we may conclude he would not have passed over so important a fact in silence.
With the knowledge we at present possess, however, a different view must be taken of the subject; and it must at least be allowed that the statements of the ancients had some foundation in truth. This is rendered more certain by the circumstance that atropa mandragora belongs to the same genus as belladonna, which has a greater power in annulling the common sensibility than any plant in present use, unless it be aconite. The loss of reason, described by Dioscorides as caused by mandragora, is a striking symptom of poisoning by the class of plants (the solanaceæ) to which it belongs. It appears from some remarks of Aretæus[[10]] and Cælius Aurelianus[[11]] that people were in the habit of taking mandragora as an inebriating agent in the time of the ancients, as an allied plant, the datura, is used at present by the natives of India. This practice would lead to a correct knowledge of the quantity which might be taken with impunity.
The mandrake is scarcely used in medicine at present, but its narcotic properties are well established. Hoffberg[[12]] administered the root in doses of three grains in some cases of gout, with the effect of relieving the pain.
Cases of poisoning by belladonna end, with very few exceptions, in recovery, however large the dose, and however alarming the symptoms may be; and, taking all the above circumstances into account, it is probable, that after ascertaining the right quantity to be administered for the purpose, this medicine or mandragora might be used, with considerable success, and no great danger, to prevent the pain of operations, if chemistry had not supplied us with agents much more convenient.
Not many ages after the Greek and Roman authors above quoted were describing the effects of mandrake in preventing the pain of operations, another plant, the Indian hemp, was employed for the same purpose in a more remote part of the world. M. Stanislas Julien, in an article on Chinese Medicine,[[13]] gives a notice of a work entitled “Koukin-i-tong, or a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Medicine,” in fifty volumes, 4to., and makes an extract from it respecting Hoa-tho, a practitioner, who flourished under the dynasty of Wei, between 220 and 230 of our era. Respecting Hoa-tho, it is stated that—“When he found that it was necessary to employ acupuncture, he applied it in two or three places; he did the same with the moxa, if it was indicated by the nature of the affection which he had to treat. But if the malady was situated in parts on which the needle, the moxa, or liquid medicines could not act—for example, in the bones, in the medulla of the bones, in the stomach, or the intestines, he gave to the patient a preparation of hemp (Ma-yo), and, at the end of some instants, he became as insensible as if he had been drunk, or deprived of life. Then, according to the case, he made openings and incisions, performed amputations, and removed the cause of mischief; he then brought together the tissues with points of suture, and applied liniments. After a certain number of days (at the end of a month, according to the annals of the later Hân) the patient found himself reestablished, without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation.”
We are not informed of the way in which the hemp was administered. If insensibility was caused so quickly, as is stated, it must have been by inhaling the fumes of the hemp when exposed to heat, and not by taking it into the stomach. This view of the matter is rendered more probable by the circumstance that the ancient Scythians were in the habit of inhaling the fumes of hemp,[[14]] several centuries before the time of Hoa-tho, and also by the practice of the Hindoos at present, who inhale the fumes of hemp from a pipe. The remark that the patient became reestablished at the end of a certain number of days, must refer to his recovery from the wound caused by the operation, and we are not informed how long the state of insensibility continued.