AN ÆSTHETICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2203, 26 January 1886, Page 2

AN ÆSTHETICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES .

. Id a paper read before the last meeting of the French Academy of Medicino, M. Lajpeau described his researches into tha anesthetic's employed in Europe by physicians in tho middle age 3. That such were known is beyond doubt. Abelard, speaking of the creation of Eve from a rib of Adam, speaks of the deep sleep which fell upon the latter as similar to that which physicians .produce in patients"upon whom tlioy wish to opel'ate. Pliny speaks of a stone of Memphis which, when crushed and treated with vinegar,. renders any part to which it is applied insensible'to pain; and many old authors speak of surgeons producing sleep in their patients before an operation by mixing with their food a decoction of the leaves or root of the mandragora, or some grains of the plant called "morion," Reparations of these two plants, as woll as of other narcotics, were employed by surgeons down to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but much less in subsequent times, Opium was also used for a similar purpose, while in the East the anaesthetic properties of hemp have been known from the earliest times. These were all taken into the stomach; but anassthesia by inhalation was also known, Two different preparations were discovered in the thirteenth century; ono by a Dominican of Rome,Jthe otlierjby a surgeon named Theodoric, who was'alsoa preaching friar, and subsequently a bishop. Both of these were prepared from opium, henbane, mandragora, hemlock, and many other plants, and were inhaled from a sponge. It is, however, difficult to believe that preparations so little volatile could produce anesthesia by simple inhalation. M. Perrin, who has betn studying ancient anesthetics,.has given the composition of a liquid which contains all the! ingredients required "for chloroform, and it is said that this was applied to witnesses or prisoners who were about to be tortured in the judicial tribunals of the middle ages. After inhaling it the unfortunate subject was plunged into a semi- comatose state, which diminished in a certain degree the pain of the torture. This liquid was always kept in a place adjoining the torture chamber.