Robert Beckett, who broke his leg and had to have it set at the local hospital, was given

something to put him to sleep while this rather painful process was going on. All he remembered afterward was that a white-coated man made a prick in his arm—the body hardly felt it—and then sat down beside him and asked him to count slowly to ten. (46) (47) While Robert was couting, the anaesthetist was pressing the plunger of the syringe and injecting into his arm a small amount of liquid that looked like water. The liquid was not water, but a solution containing a drug that was powerful enough to put Robert to sleep and keep him there while his leg was being set. The same drug would not have been powerful enough to keep Robert unconscious had he required serious surgery. For operations where the patient must remain unconscious for an hour or more, the anaesthetist must administer the right amount of anesthetic continuously. (48) It is usually not an injection, but a kind of gas that the patient breathes in through a mask placed over his face. (49) Like most other early medicines, they were extracted from plants. Four plants producing such drugs were particularly well know—the poppy, henbane, hemp and mandrake. Poppies are still used as a source of morphine, a very widely used drug. (50) Today hemp is most often used as raw material from which rope is made, but it is still known in parts of Central South America as "the weed that intoxicates". The other herb, mandrake, is almost unknown today, but it was widely used among the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, and peoples of the Far East. According to one legend, the mandrake plant, when pulled from the ground, was supposed to give an unearthly shriek, so dreadful that a person who heard it died or went mad.

A. The type of anesthetic he uses depends on the patient and the type of surgery to be performed.

B. Robert got as far as seven, then woke up in bed with his leg in plaster.

C. The prick that he felt was caused by the hollow needle of a hypodermic syringe.

D. That was the state of affairs until the beginning of the last century.

E. Henbane is not so well known, though it is still used in some medicines.

F. Drugs that cause unconsciousness and kill pain are not new.

(46)