The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (1970)

The Wife of Seishû Hanaoka is set in feudal Japan. Its two central characters are based on the wife and mother of Japanese physician Seishû Hanaoka (1760-1835). Hanaoka developed a herbal general anesthetic, "Tsusensan", some forty years before the better-known innovations of his American counterparts Long, Wells and Morton.