First general anaesthetic was based on datura

fascinating - thank you both for sharing ~

Actually, the first use of anaesthesia was several thousand years ago, by a Chinese doctor named Hua Tuo. His surgery was documented but the precise recipe was lost. Several books are ascribed to Hua Tuo but most scholars believe that none were actually written by Hua Tuo himself. Most likely they were written by his students and then ascribed to him. His recipe ma fei san is the first recorded anaesthetic formula, but it's
ingredients are speculative. It is believed to contain datura and aconite, among other substances. It seems that this Japanese recipe is the earliest well-documented use of anaesthesia with a known recipe, but the use of anaesthesia in surgery was first pioneered nearly 1500 years before the one mentioned above.