Usually a combination of opioid and hypnotic drugs are used to achieve a state of balanced general anesthesia in the surgical patient. As evidenced by the great variation in practice, a fundamental but unanswered question is "How much opioid should be given intraoperatively?" In Greek mythology, Hypnos was the god of sleep. He lived on the island of Lemnos in a dark cave surrounded by poppies. One of his sons was Morpheus, who gave form to the dreams of kings and heroes. The article by Liley et al. in this issue of Anesthesiology proposes an electroencephalographic index of opioid effect. Perhaps, this study has given us a tool to dissect out the influence of the poppies on Hypnos?
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