Anesthetics as a practice—not a science—was hardly a novelty by the nineteenth century.
which sentence from the passage  best  supports this statement?
excerpt from  anaesthetics
in  great inventions and discoveries
by willis duff piercy
          if those inventions and discoveries out of which have come widespread safety, happiness, or prosperity to mankind are to be considered great, then dr. morton's discovery of anesthetics and its application to surgery is entitled to a high place among the world's discoveries and inventions.  the pain that has been destroyed, the lives that have been saved, the sorrow that has been averted, give their testimony to the value of this discovery to humanity.
            at least something of anesthetics was known to the ancients.  homer mentions nepenthe, a potion which was said to make persons forget their pains and sorrows.  the word appears occasionally in literature.
          virgil and other classical writers mention a mythical river lethe which was supposed to surround hades.  souls passing over to the happy fields of elysium first drank from this river, whose waters caused them to forget their sorrows.  milton speaks of the mythical stream in the following passage from "paradise lost: "
                    "far off from these a slow and silent stream,
                    lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls her watery labyrinth."
          the sleep-producing effects of the mandragora or mandrake are alluded to by shakespeare.  he also frequently mentions in a general way draughts that act as anesthetics, without making clear their specific natures.  an old chinese manuscript indicates that a physician of that country named hoa-tho in the third century after christ used a preparation of hemp as an anesthetic in surgical operations.  although the ancients had knowledge of anesthetics of one kind or other, the practice of anesthesia never became general, and surgeons of the ancient world appear to have looked upon it with disfavor.