RANDOLPH. — MANDRAGORA IN FOLK-LORE AND MEDICLNR. 513 



It is probable, indeed, tliat the most general use of mandragora de- 

 pended on its soporific properties. It was an ingredient of an enormous 

 number of those compounds which the ancients called anodynes (avw^wa), 

 meaning by the word remedies which relieve pain by causing sleep.* 

 To gain an idea of how common this use was, one has only to turn, for 

 example, to the 13th volume of Galen, in Kiihn's Medici Graeci, and 

 to note the number of times mandragora is mentioned in the anodynes 

 there recommended. 



Of all the statements that have come down to us regarding the uses of 

 mandragora in ancient medicine, the most interesting are those which 

 concern its use as an anaesthetic before surgical operations. Since 

 anaesthetic agents began to be used in modern surgery, in the first half 

 of the last century, the tradition in regard to their use by the ancients 

 has been the subject of alternate wonder and disbelief. Says the New 

 York Medical Journal of June 23, 1888:- 



It is probably with almost complete incredulity that most of us have read 

 of the anaesthetic virtues of the mandrake as recounted by the writers of 

 antiquity. 



Most modern writers on anaesthetics have paid comparatively little 

 attention to the tradition of their use by the ancients, and those who 

 have undertaken to examine this tradition more fully have often made 

 very inaccurate statements about it,t frequently taking their material at 



cause temporary mental aberration, in wliich the soporific properties of the plant 

 are again referred to : 



Giov. Batt. (lella Porta (153G-1615), Mag. Xat. (Lngd. Bat, 1650), lib. 8, cap. 2: 

 Morion si draclima propinetiir infatuare dicit Dioscorides. Nos id faciliter fecimus 

 vino ; quod his constat : Mandragorae radices accipito, in niustum adhuc fervens 

 et in buUas tumens deinittito, operculum indito, aptoque loco serveter binis inensi- 

 bus. Quum eo indigueris potui dabis. Qui id hauserit, ubi multum profundo 

 f uerit demersus somno, mente capitur, ut per diem non paruni deliret ; ac post 

 somnum snlvitur dementia, nee damnum affert ; multumque fuerit voluptuosum 

 videre : periclitamini (!). 



* See Ceis., 5. 25. 1 ; Galen, 10. 810 f. ; Aret., De Cur. Acut. :\Iorb., 2. 5. 



t Thus a writer in tlie Philndilphia Medical News, 66 (1895), p. 313, speaks of 

 "Dioscorides mentioning the method of preparing the sleeping-apple " (!), a thing 

 which Dioscorides nowhere mentions, nor any other ancient writer, so far as I am 

 able to find. The same writer attributes the following to IIero<lotus: " Herodotus 

 states that in early times anaesthesia was i)ro(Iuced by the inhalation of bhang or 

 hasheesh, even before the use of mandragora, and it was used for the express pur- 

 pose of operative procedure. He also states that the Greeks were familiar with 

 VOL. XL. — 33 



