The Egades are a small group of islands off the coast of Sicily, relatively free of foreign tourism. Among them, we visited the island of Marettimo. A lovely path leads us up into the sparsely vegetated mountain, to an abandoned fort. The climate of this area is typically Mediterranean, meaning a dry, hot summer, and a wet winter. The vegetation is the typical "garrigue", formed of a series of short, bushy plants, many with spines, but all of them quite fragrant. Among them, are thyme, oregano, rue, rosemary, lentisk, the Mediterranean sloe, and the strawberry tree (a species of madrone). But that plant that attracted our attention most was the mandrake, small, with blue flowers. Greek legends tell us that Dioscorides received from the hands of Euresis, goddess of discovery, the mandrake root with magic powers, which when uprooted, screamed so loud, that it deafened the collector. So dogs were trained to obtain these roots, but a good number of them died in the process. The roots are fancied to have the human form. The mandrake plant is of the family of the potato, and therefore, as in almost all the species of this family, poisonous. It contains hyoscyamine, an alkaloid, and was used by doctors of old as an anaesthetic. Dioscorides had a patient chew a piece of root, to operate on him. Pliny used wine-steeped mandrake root to put patients in a deep painless sleep before surgery or cauterization of wounds. Thus anaesthesia was born. Today, the Greek Society of Anaesthetists always uses the mandrake as its emblem.