Year: 2000
Type: article
Abstract: The earliest mention of anesthesia is found in the Book of Genesis (see above).Physicians have tried to relieve the pain of surgery since antiquity: Opium and alcohol had long been used as analgesics, and Dioscorides, who lived at the beginning of the Christian era, urged that the root of Atrop Mandragora (mandrake) steeped in wine be given to patients before facing the knife.Medieval patients were given a "soporific sponge," soaked in opium, mandragora and hyoscalmine (popularly known as henbane), the poor man's opium (1).
Author: Michael A. E. Ramsay
Institution: Baylor University Medical Center
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W131873076