Shakespeare's observation on anaesthesia:
Based on Shakespeare's observation, by producing unconsciousness to decrease or reduce the pain of injury or disease, simple surgical procedures are almost as old as civilization, although the techniques were crude.
Most included the ingestion of herbal mixtures or ethanol, but bilateral carotid artery compression and ‘knock-out’ blows to the head are also described.
These methods were harmlessly ineffective and were mostly impossible to quantify but are majorly not in the case of obstructing the blood flow to brain or head trauma.
In Shakespeare's Cymbeline, there will be an instance in which the queen's poison was ingested to alleviate or reduce the psychological distress.