Muslim physicians are the first to utilize inhaled anesthetics!

With the firm establishment of the Muslim supremacy between the 9th and 16th centuries, the study of medicine along with other branches of science revived and acquired a truly scientific nature.

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, an Arab physician described as the father of surgery. Published  Kitab al-Tasrif, the first illustrated work on surgery. In this book, he wrote about the use of general anesthesia for surgery.

 Ibn Sina described the use of inhaled anesthesia in The Canon of Medicine. The Canon described the "soporific sponge", a sponge imbued with aromatics and narcotics, which was to be placed under a patient's nose during surgical operations.

Ibn Zuhr  was another Arab physician from Al-Andalus. In his medical textbook Al-Taisir, Ibn Zuhr describes the use of general anesthesia.

These three physicians were among many who performed operations under inhaled anesthesia with the use of narcotic-soaked sponges. 

For pain relief, Muslim physicians stressed the treatment of the underlying cause and they subsequently developed a large number of analgesics with variable modes of action.

The anesthetics they described included a wide range of medical plants as well as ice or very cold iced water as an efficient and safe mode of local anesthesia even though there might be an increase in the pain at the beginning. Refrigeration anesthesia which is considered by some to be a modern discovery, thus, had its origin in the medicine of the past.

In dentistry, they used opium, mandrake root or henbane juice in the form of pastes, patches or fillings. Gargles from decoctions of mandrake root, henbane root or seeds or the root of solanum were also used.

Opium made its way from Asia Minor to all parts of Europe between the 10th and 13th centuries.