Dioscorides, a Greek physician of Cilicia, in Asia, who was born about the time of Pliny’s death, and who wrote an extensive work on the materia medica, observes, in his chapter on mandragora,—
1. “Some boil down the roots in wine to a third part, and preserve the juice thus procured, and give one cyathus of it in sleeplessness and severe pains, of whatever part; also to cause the insensibility—to produce the anæsthesia ποιειν αναισθησιαν—of those who are to be cut or cauterized.”
2. “There is prepared, also, besides the decoction, a wine from the bark of the root, three minæ being thrown into a cask of sweet wine, and of this three cyathi are given to those who are to be cut or cauterized, as aforesaid; for, being thrown into a deep sleep, they do not perceive pain.”
3. Speaking of another variety of mandragora, called morion, he observes, “Medical men use it also for those who are to be cut or cauterized.”
Dioscorides also describes the stone Memphitis, mentioned by Pliny, and says that when it is powdered and applied to parts to be cut or cauterized, they are rendered, without the slightest danger, wholly insensible to pain. Matthiolus, the commentator on Dioscorides, confirms his statement of the virtues of mandragora, which is repeated by Dodoneus. “Wine in which the roots of mandragora have been steeped,” says this latter writer, “brings on sleep, and appeases all pains, so that it is given to those who are to be cut, sawed, or burned in any parts of their body, that they may not perceive pain.”
The expressions used by Apuleius of Madaura, who flourished about a century after Pliny, are still more remarkable than those already quoted from the older authors. He says, when treating of mandragora, “If any one is to have a member mutilated, burned, or sawed, [mutilandum, comburendum, vel serrandum,] let him drink half an ounce with wine, and let him sleep till the member is cut away without any pain or sensation [et tantum dormiet, quosque abscindatur membrum aliquo sine dolore et sensu].”
It was not in Europe and in Western Asia alone that these early efforts to discover some lethean were made, and attended with partial success. On the opposite side of the continent, the Chinese—who have anticipated the Europeans in so many important inventions, as in gunpowder, the mariner’s compass, printing, lithography, paper money, and the use of coal—seem to have been quite as far in advance of the Occidental world in medical science. They understood, ages before they were introduced into Christendom, the use of substances containing iodine for the cure of the goitre, and employed spurred rye (ergot) to shorten dangerously-prolonged labor in difficult accouchements. Among the therapeutic methods confirmed by the experience of thousands of years, the records of which they have preserved with religious veneration, the employment of an anæsthetic agent to paralyze the nervous sensibility before performing surgical operations, is distinctly set forth. Among a considerable number of Chinese works on the pharmacopœia, medicine, and surgery, in the National Library at Paris, is one entitled Kou-kin-i-tong, or general collection of ancient and modern medicine, in fifty volumes quarto. Several hundred biographical notices of the most distinguished physicians in China are prefixed to this work. The following curious passages occur in the sketches of the biography of Hoa-tho, who flourished under the dynasty of Wei, between the years 220 and 230 of our era. “When he determined that it was necessary to employ acupuncture, he employed it in two or three places; and so with the moxa if that was indicated by the nature of the affection to be treated. But if the disease resided in parts upon which the needle, moxa, or liquid medicaments could not operate,—for example in the bones, or the marrow of the bones, in the stomach or the intestines,—he gave the patient a preparation of hemp, (in the Chinese language mayo,) and after a few moments he became as insensible as if he had been drunk or dead. Then, as the case required, he performed operations, incisions, or amputations, and removed the cause of the malady; then he brought together and secured the tissues, and applied liniments. After a certain number of days, the patient recovered, without having experienced the slightest pain during the operation.”
Almost a thousand years after the date of the unmistakable phrases quoted from Apuleius, according to the testimony of William of Tyre, and other chroniclers of the wars for the rescue of the holy sepulchre, and the fascinating narrative of Marco Polo, a state of anæsthesia was induced for very different purposes. It became an instrument in the hands of bold and crafty impostors to perpetuate and extend the most terrible fanaticism that the world has ever seen.
The employment of anæsthetic agents in surgical operations was not forgotten or abandoned during the period when they were pressed into the appalling service just described. In the thirteenth century, anæsthesia was produced by inhalation of an anodyne vapor, in a mode oddly forestalling the practices of the present day, which is described as follows in the surgical treatise of Theodoric, who died in 1298. It is the receipt for the “spongia somnifera,” as it is called in the rubric:—
“The preparation of a scent for performing surgical operations, according to Master Hugo. It is made thus:—Take of opium and the juice of unripe mulberry, of hyoscyamus, of the juice of the hemlock, of the juice of the leaves of the mandragora, of the juice of the woody ivy, of the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of lettuce, of the seed of the burdock, which has large and round apples, and of the water-hemlock, each one ounce; mix the whole of these together in a brazen vessel, and then place a new sponge in it, and let the whole boil, and as long as the sun on the dog-days, till it (the sponge) consumes it all, and let it be boiled away in it. As often as there is need of it, place this same sponge in warm water for one hour, and let it be applied to the nostrils till he who is to be operated on (qui incidentus est) has fallen asleep; and in this state let the operation be performed (et sic fiat chirurgia). When this is finished, in order to rouse him, place another, dipped in vinegar, frequently to his nose, or let the juice of the roots of fenigreek be squirted into his nostrils. Presently he awakens.”