The history and progress of surgery : an address, delivered to the medical students of the Melbourne Hospital, on the occasion of the presentation of the prizes in the class of operative surgery / by James George Beaney.

  • Beaney, James George, 1828-1891.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history and progress of surgery : an address, delivered to the medical students of the Melbourne Hospital, on the occasion of the presentation of the prizes in the class of operative surgery / by James George Beaney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    18/42 (page 14)
    cannot call anaesthesia a modern invention. Most of you are tolerably familiar with lago's maliciously triumphant exclamation with respect to Othello's mental misery:— Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday. Well, Pliny tells us in the 94th chapter of his Natural History, that mandragora was adminis- tered just as we administer chloroform. His words are very remarkable. He says:—It is given for injuries inflicted by serpents, and before incisions or punctures are made in the body, in order to insure insensibility to the pain. Indeed, for this last purpose, with some persons, the odour is quite sufficient to induce sleep. Apuleius tells us that by drinking mandrake with wine, a limb may be cut off with- out any sense of pain. An anaesthetic agent for pro- ducing insensibility to pain was in use among the ('hinese 1 GOO years ago; a preparation of Indian hemp for throwing the patient into a profound stupor was the agent employed. The anaesthetic properties of this plant were also known to the ancient Scythians. •