Use of medicinal herbs to render patients unconscious before surgery goes back to Roman times.
Recent studies have identified a large number of recipes for an herbal anaesthetic known as dwale, written in medieval English.
This mixture of seven ingredients is divided into two groups – harmless and dangerous.
It is believed that this early anaesthetic would have been administered ordinary housewives caring for those who had, perhaps, returned home injured from the war because dwale recipes was found in domestic remedy books.
In addition to alcohol, the ingredients in dwale are:
Bile
Hemlock
Bryony
Lettuce
Opium
Henbane
Vinegar…
