Even as a surgeon minding off to cut Som cureless limb; before in use he put His violent engins in the victim’s member, Bringeth his patient in a senseless slumber: And griefless then (guided by use and art) To save the whole, saws off the infested part. Porta, writing in 1579, says: “It is possible to extract from several soporific plants a quintessence, which is to be shut up in a well-covered leaden vessel, lest the drug should evaporate. When it is to be used, the lid is to be removed and the medicament held to the nostrils, when its vapour will be drawn in by the breath and attack the citadel of the senses, so that the patient will be sunk in a deeper sleep not to be shook off without much labour.” [Illustration: A SURGEON PERFORMING AN OPERATION ON THE EYE From a woodcut of the XVII century] Besides mandragora, opium, Indian hemp, and other plants with narcotic properties already referred to, that were used for anæsthetic purposes in mediæval times, certain substances are mentioned by early writers that cannot be identified. Thus Albertus Magnus mentions an animal product, of which he says: “Any person smelling it falls down as if dead and insensible to pain,” but there is no reference to such a drug by other writers of the period. [Sidenote: Local anæsthetics in antient times] Local anæsthesia was not unknown during the middle ages, and Cardow recommends the inunction of a mixture consisting of “opium, celandine, saffron, and the marrow and fat of man, together with oil of lizards.” He also adds: “If the patient drinks wine in which the seeds of the patulica marina have been steeped for a week, it will prevent him feeling any pain.” [Sidenote: First mention of freezing as an anæsthetic] Bernard mentions that it was customary in Salerno to mix the crushed seeds of poppy and henbane, and apply them as a plaster, to deaden sensibility, to parts that were about to be cauterised; while Bartolinus states that local anæsthesia was sometimes produced by freezing, thereby foreshadowing the use of ether and ethyl chloride as local anæsthetics. [Sidenote: Boerhaave’s anæsthetic] During the seventeenth century the belief in the narcotic draughts of the antients for producing anæsthesia appears to have waned, and few allusions are made to them until the middle of the eighteenth century, when fresh interest seems to have been excited in the subject. The famous Boerhaave is said to have used opium as an anæsthetic, both by inhalation of its vapour and also by internal administration in powder. According to Van Swieten, in his commentaries upon Boerhaave’s “Aphorisms,” the following is given as the recipe: “Oil of cinnamon, 2 drops; oil of cloves, 1 drop; citron peel, 2 grains; sugar, 2 drachms. Mix and add red coral, prepared, 1 drachm; pure opium, 2 grains. Mix for two doses, one of which is to be taken one hour before the operation, and the other one quarter hour before it, if the patient has not slept.”