In connection with crucifixion, which was a common punishment for malefactors among the Jews before the Christian era, with the sanction of the Sanhedrin, the women were wont to ease the terrible death agony of the sufferers by giving them something in the nature of a “wine of the condemned” upon a sponge. It is probable that the “wine mingled with myrrh” which, according to St. Mark, was offered to Christ before nailing Him upon the Cross, was indeed a narcotic draught, given with the object of lessening His sensibility to the agony. The earliest reference to anæsthesia by inhalation is contained in the works of Herodotus, who states that the Scythians were accustomed to produce intoxication by inhaling the vapour of a certain kind of hemp, which they threw upon the fire or upon stones heated for the purpose. This was probably _Cannabis indica_, or Indian hemp, which was employed by Oriental races as an anæsthetic from very early times. [Sidenote: Anodyne poultices to deaden pain] At the siege of Troy the Greek army surgeons employed anodyne and astringent poultices to assuage the pain of the wounded. Thus Patroclus, when his dagger from the thigh of Euryphylus-- Cut out the biting shaft; and from the wound With tepid water cleansed the clotted blood; Then, pounded in his hands, the root applied Astringent, anodyne, which all his pain Allay’d; the wound was dried, and stanched the blood. _Iliad._ [Illustration: GATHERING MANDRAGORA From an MS. of the XII century] From this interesting description of the manner in which the early Greek surgeons treated a wound, it is evident that, although they had no actual knowledge of anæsthetics, they had found from experience the advantage of cleansing the wound and applying an astringent and anodyne dressing to deaden sensibility to pain, which probably, unknown to them, also possessed antiseptic qualities. MANDRAGORA AS AN ANÆSTHETIC [Sidenote: The anæsthetics of antient Greece] That the early Greeks also used certain methods for deadening sensibility to pain is evidenced by several of the antient writers. Pindar states “Machaon eased the sufferings of Philoctetes with a narcotic potion.” Theocritus also alludes to Lucina, the goddess of the obstetric art, as “pouring an insensibility to pain down all the limbs of a woman in the throes of labour.” Aphrodite, to assuage her grief for the death of Adonis, is said to have thrown herself on a bed of lettuce and mandragora.