Contrary to common assumptions, alcohol and biting on a stick were not the only solutions to withstanding surgery in ancient times. Evidence of herbal anesthetics date back to the Roman period. In 800 AD, a Benedictine monk in Southern Italy scribbled down his recipe, which involved opium, henbane, mulberry juice, lettuce, hemlock, mandragora, and ivy. Yum!
English manuscripts later described a variant of this as “dwale” and added some fun flavors, such as the bile of boars (or a sow, if you were a woman) and vinegar. To the chagrin of Mary Poppins, they neglected to add any sugar to help the medicine go down and instead opted for three spoonfuls of “good wine.”
If you’d like the full recipe* for “how to make a drink…to make a man sleep whilst men cut him,” here’s a typical one found in English manuscripts:
- 3 spoonfuls of gall from a barrow swine (for a man) or a gilt (for a woman)
- 3 spoonfuls of hemlock juice
- 3 spoonfuls of wild neep (byrony)
- 3 spoonfuls of lettuce
- 3 spoonfuls of pape (opium)
- 3 spoonfuls of henbane
- 3 spoonfuls of eysyl (vinegar)
- 3 spoonfuls of good wine
- Salt and vinegar as needed
*In case this isn’t blindingly obvious: Most of these ingredients are POISONOUS! Do not make or imbibe dwale; go see a real doctor!
Mix and boil everything but the wine, pour into a glass vessel, and then mix in the wine. Now (per the original recipe), put your patient beside a good fire and “make him drink thereof until he fall asleep and then you may safely cut him…”
But don’t forget the after care: “…and when you have done your cure and will have him awake, take vinegar and salt and wash well his temples and his cheekbones and he shall awake immediately.”
Let’s take a gander at why these ingredients may have chosen and what effects they potentially (or definitely) had:
Bile: Emulsifier that potentially aided absorption
Hemlock: Greece’s official poison (and the one that Socrates was sentenced to drink as his death sentence). Hemlock induces paralysis (motor, sensory, and eventually respiratory).
Bryony: For British medievalists, bryony replaced mandrake root, which was unavailable in northern climates. Mandrake induces drowsiness and hallucinations.
Lettuce: Considered a mild sedative for centuries (though recent science has failed to support this).
Opium: A powerful painkiller. Nowadays, opium is processed into both heroin and morphine.
Henbane: Induces a “twilight sleep” (a deep unconsciousness). Interestingly, this was used all the way into the early 1900s by psychiatrists and obstetricians.
Vinegar: A pungent rouser of those in a stupor.
So rest assured, if you ever end up time traveling and need emergency surgery, ask your local sawbones for a swig of dwale first.
Sources:
Carter, A. J. (1999). Dwale: an anaesthetic from old England. BMJ, 319(7225), 1623–1626. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1623
Jess Clark (January 6, 2022). ‘Dwale’: A Medieval Sleeping Drug in a Seventeenth-Century Receipt Book. The Recipes Project. Retrieved May 1, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/tdc2