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Ming Dynasty Surgeons Used Poison as an Anesthetic, Ancient Tools Reveal

A pair of surgical scissors from the Ming Dynasty tomb of physician Xia Quan. (Ling et al., Antiquity, 2026) Traces of red ...
Greek Reporter

China’s Oldest Known Anesthetic Evidence Found on Ming Dynasty Surgical Tools

Xue Ling / CC BY 4.0 Traces of a toxic plant compound found on surgical scissors and tweezers from China represent what ...

The poison that put patients to sleep: 600-year-old Ming Dynasty surgical tools reveal a forgotten secret

Before ether, before chloroform, before the entire modern architecture of surgical anaesthesia was built in the nineteenth ...
La Brújula Verde

Residues of a Lethal Toxin Found in Medieval Medical Instruments Reveal That Anesthesia Was Already Used in 14th-Century Surgeries in China

A team of Chinese archaeologists has identified residues of aconitine on a pair of iron scissors and surgical forceps ...