In 1811, the English novelist Fanny Burney underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia, with a dose of whiskey to relieve the pain.

Burney took advantage of the fainting spell caused by the severe pain to lose consciousness without feeling the surgical pain.

The operation took place at a time when surgical anesthesia was still in its infancy, and the limited available options could often be unreliable and dangerous.

Tony Wildsmith, Emeritus Professor of Anesthesia at the University of Dundee in Scotland, and former Royal Archivist at the Royal College of Anaesthetists in the United Kingdom, said that historical tales like hers reveal "how surgery was before anesthesia."

Going back to the eleventh century AD, reports were published about doctors using sponges soaked with opium and mandrake juice for patients to induce sleep in preparation for surgery and to relieve the pain that followed.

Going even further back, manuscripts ranging from the Roman era to the Middle Ages describe a recipe for a sedative mixture called "dwale." According to a medieval manuscript, the tincture was made from an intoxicating blend of bile juice, opium, mandrake juice, and vinegar.

Since the seventeenth century in Europe, opium and laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) have become common painkillers.