Page:The First Anesthetic, the Story of Crawford Long - Frank Kells Boland.djvu/17

Previous Attempts "anesthesia" when he wrote: "And some boil down in wine the roots into a third and having strained out they store away; using one cyathus upon those being sleepless and those in great pain and upon whom they wish to produce anesthesia while being cut or cauterized."1 Oliver Wendell Holmes added "anesthetic"; "anesthetist" evolved later. Quistorp, of Rostock, Mecklenberg, was the author of De Anesthesia, published in 1718, in which he resurrected the word and used it in discussing whether the body leaves the soul when consciousness is lost under anesthesia. There is a long section in the book on why pain is not always ex- perienced during torture, and especially during the agony of crucifixion.2

The U. 5. Congress Reports on the Ether Discovery, 1863,3 gives interesting facts concerning the first attempts in anesthesia, which are reproduced here. Hoatho, in China, about 220 A.D., is credited with the following passage: "But if the disease resided in parts upon which the needle or liquid medicaments could not operate — for example in the bones, in the stomach or intestines, he gave the patient a preparation of hemp (in Chinese, ma-yo,) 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, during the operation, the slightest pain." This has some elements of the description of a modern operation. Hemp was also known as hashish, or Cannabis indica, and in more recent years has become "marijuana" in Mexico, Central and South America, but is not rated as an anesthetic drug. From the statement of Hoatho, one is led to believe that early attempts at