Vicodin- wasRe: [Sca-cooks] Offline

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> Depending on your when/where, opium and willowbark tea
> were available. Marijuana derivatives, too, I think.
> Alcohol, of course. Dunno what else- coca leaves,
> maybe, in the New World.... Hafta ask an herbalist- I
> know they used all kindsa diffe3rent herbs for
> different purposes, and some of them even worked-
> digitalis, for example, from foxglove, and aspirin
> from willow bark.....

The most common anesthetics appear to be combinations of narcotic herbs
that we now consider too dangerous to use, though they did use them in
period.

There was an interesting article not long ago in Smithsonian on the
development of aspirin and other painkillers. They claimed that though the
active ingredient is in willow bark, it was actually isolated from
Meadowsweet and thus the name.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
	"Index your brain."