Humans Residues on medical equipment reveal that physicians in China over 600 years ago used aconitine, a highly toxic plant chemical, to alleviate pain during surgical procedures Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Scissors and tweezers from the tomb of Xia Quan, with residues containing the anaesthetic aconitine Courtesy Xue Ling, et al Two medical instruments recovered from the 15th-century tomb of a Chinese surgeon carry traces of an anaesthetic compound, the earliest chemical evidence ever found of doctors attempting to reduce the pain of a medical procedure. The surgical scissors and tweezers were unearthed in 1974 from the tomb of a famous doctor named Xia Quan who lived from 1348 to 1411, in Jiangsu province. Congcang Zhao at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, and his colleagues used lasers to study the composition of residues on the instruments, revealing traces of aconitine. This compound is produced by plants of the Aconitum genus, commonly known as wolfsbane and monkshood.…