An anesthetic component was found on surgical instruments from the tomb of a 15th-century Chinese physician. There are records that anesthetics were used in ancient India or China, but this is the first time chemical evidence of an anesthetic has been found on actual surgical tools.
A research team led by Congcang Zhao, a professor at the School of Cultural Heritage at Northwest University in China, said on the 26th that it detected aconitine, an anesthetic component, on surgical scissors and tweezers from a Ming Dynasty physician's tomb, in the international archaeology journal Antiquity.
Aconitine is a toxic substance extracted from plants of the genus Aconitum. It is found in the tuberous root of monkshood, cho-o. In Korea, the manufacture, processing, import, and cooking of cho-o are banned. It also appears as a deadly poison in the film Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead Monkshood, starring Kim Myung-min and Han Ji-min.
◇ Toxic substance from monkshood confirmed using lasers
The surgical scissors and tweezers analyzed this time came from the tomb of physician Xia Quan (1348–1411), excavated in 1974 in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province in eastern China. Xia was known in life for skill in surgery and acupuncture. There are red spots on the surfaces of the scissors and tweezers. The research team believed they contained substances that adhered during operations.
The team used a stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscope, which analyzes trace components without damaging artifacts. When the difference in the frequencies of two lasers matches exactly the frequency of the molecule under examination, stimulated Raman scattering occurs, in which the energy of the light is amplified or reduced.
The analysis found that the red dots remaining on the surgical scissors and tweezers were aconitine. The team inferred that the physician applied a powder containing aconitine to the skin to numb it before making an incision. During the subsequent surgery, aconitine got on the scissors and tweezers and has remained until now.
Archaeologists have identified residues of ancient medicines using advanced analytical techniques, from Roman cosmetics to hallucinogens in the Andes. But existing techniques were hard to apply to medical residues in ancient China because residues rarely survive and, even when they do, the amounts are insufficient. Raman microscopy, which uses lasers, can overcome those limitations.
◇ First discovery of direct evidence of anesthetics
Medical texts from the Ming Dynasty say the toxicity of cho-o can be reduced by decocting it with mung beans and licorice or steaming it with vinegar. When made into powder, it can be transformed from a poison into an anesthetic that eliminates pain, but this is the first confirmation of direct evidence that it was used in actual surgery.
Zhao said, "Six centuries ago, a Ming Dynasty surgeon performed operations using iron scissors and tweezers, and using a laser beam we have read traces of anesthetic left on those tools," and added, "Combined with prescriptions for anesthetics recorded in Ming medical texts, we confirmed that aconitine was used as a local anesthetic during surgery."
The origins of surgical anesthesia go back to ancient India and China. The ancient Indian medical text Sushruta Samhita records that alcohol and cannabis were used before operations to reduce patients' pain. There is also an account that in the 2nd century the Chinese physician Hua Tuo added a numbing powder to wine before surgery.
However, the prescription for the numbing powder has not been handed down, making it difficult to conclude it was a record of general anesthesia in the modern sense. The Sushruta Samhita also preserves a medical tradition compiled from centuries before the Common Era to the early Common Era, but the text that survives today has been edited by later hands.
References
Antiquity (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2026.10347