526 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



In the book De Euporistis, whicli has commonly been attributed to 

 Dioscorides,* we have the most direct testimony regarding the practice 

 of using anaesthetics in surgery. Here, in enumerating several com- 

 pounds used to induce sleep, the author remarks : 



Diosc, 2. 100 : We also use soporifics in the case of persons whose suffer- 

 ing is continued, — when one who is about to be cut or cauterized wishes to 

 become insensible to the pain. 



The use of the verb in the first person {we use) is to be noted. 



We are told that a preparation of hemp was used in China in the 

 early part of the Christian era to effect painless surgery. The following 

 passage occurs in a sixteenth-century Chinese work on medicine in the 

 biography of Hoa-tho, an eminent physician of the third century of 

 our era : f 



When he determined that it was necessary to employ acupuncture, he 

 applied it in two or three places ; and so with the moxa, if that was indicated 

 by the nature of the affection to be treated. But if the disease resided 

 in parts upon which the needle, the moxa, or liquid medicaments could not 

 operate — for example, in the bones, or the marrow of the bones, in the 

 stomach or the intestines — he gave the patient a preparation of hemp. . . . and 

 after a few moments he became as insensible as if he were drunk or dead. 

 Then, as the case required, he performed operations, incisions or amputa- 

 tions, 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. 



Unfortunately we do not know the date at which the above biography 

 was written, — whether it was composed shortly after the death of Hoa- 

 tho, when the truth of the recorded facts could be known accurately, or 

 whether we have here simply a record of a distant tradition. However 

 this is, it is another indication that antiquity was busy seeking relief 

 from the pain of surgical operations.]: 



* Though his authorship of it is questioned. See Christ, Gr. Litt.^, p. 8G2. 



t A copy of tills work is preserved at Paris in the Bihliotlieqiie Natioiiale. 

 The passage quoted is given by Julien in Comptcs Rendus des Seances de I'Aca- 

 de'mie des Sciences, 28 (1849), p. 197. 



It was perhaps confusion of tiiis account of the use of liemp with the one 

 given by Herodotus vvJiich led to the extravagant statements cited in the foot- 

 note, p. 495 f. 



X No otlier passages in ancient writers, so far as I have been able to ascertain, 

 refer certainly to the use of anaestlietics. Two additional passages from Pliny 

 may be cited as bearing indirectly on local anaesthesia : 



