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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
root of mandrake in wine down to a third part, and preserve the 
decoction, of which they administer a cyathus, about a fluid 
ounce and a half, in want of sleep and severe pains of any 
part, and also before operations with the knife , or the actual 
cautery , that they may not be felt.” Speaking further on of a 
similar decoction which is diluted with wine, he says, “ three 
cyathi of this wine are given to those who require to be cut or 
cauterised , when , being thrown into a deep sleep , they do not 
feel any pain” 
The same author, Dioscorides, describes a kind of mandragora 
called morion ; he records, that a drachm of it being taken as 
a draught, or eaten in a cake or other food, causes infatuation, 
and takes away the use of the reason. The person sleeps with- 
out sense, in the attitude in which he ate it, for three or four 
hours afterwards. Medical men also use it when they have to 
resort to cutting or burning. 
Pliny, after Dioscorides, is more circumstantial still in respect 
to mandrake, teaching that the leaves are more potent than the 
root. The draught of its preparations may, he says, kill, and 
it has the power of causing sleep in those who take it. The 
dose is half a cyathus. It is taken against serpents and before 
cuttings and punctures, lest they be felt. And then he adds, 
very curiously in respect to the medicine, “ for these purposes 
it is sufficient for some persons to have sought sleep from the 
smell” And yet another author, Apuleius, speaking of mandra- 
gora, says of it, “ If any one eat of it he will immediately die, 
unless he be treated with butter and hooey, and vomit quickly. 
More, if any one is to have a limb mutilated, burnt, or sawn, 
he may drink half an ounce with wine, and while he sleeps the 
member may be cut off without any pain or sense.” 
I have followed, in relating these details, the very clear, able, 
and concise work of the late Dr. Snow.* The reader will 
probably agree with an observation he makes on the strangeness 
of the fact, that with such passages from such well-known authors 
in existence, the practice of preventing pain during surgical 
operations was entirely unknown just prior to the year 1846. 
The fact is still more singular, when we find that through the 
middle ages, and througli the period of the revival of letters, 
and down to the last century, notions of the practice of annull- 
ing pain before operations, and even experiences of the practice, 
were constantly cropping up. Snow, in the chapter of the 
work already cited, gives us several more instances of this 
kind. He quotes from the work entitled Koukin-i-tong, a 
general collection of ancient and modern medicines of the 
Chinese, that one Hoatho, a physician, who lived about the 
• See u Snow on Chloroform and other Anaesthetics.” Edited by Richard- 
son. Churchill and Sons, 1868. Historical Introduction, pp. 1-36. 
