10 Medieval Drugs That Are Too Strong for Modern Science

10 Medieval Drugs That Are Too Strong for Modern Science Sometime in the thirteenth century, English surgeons were performing operations on fully unconscious patients. Not patients who had fainted from blood loss. Not patients restrained by force. Patients who had been given a drink, had fallen into a deep, controlled sleep, and could be cut open without waking. This was centuries before ether. Centuries before chloroform. And the recipe was written down in a manuscript that still exists today.