Hua Tuo was honored as the originator of surgery by later generations. There are many legends about Hua Tuo, especially his invention of Mafengsan, which made it possible for him to have surgery. However, because its formula has been lost, we can't verify the extent to which hemp boiling powder can be used as anesthesia, and whether it can be comparable to the current anesthetic. So I think:
1. Surgery is possible.
Hua Tuo can use Mafeisan to make patients take wine and perform laparotomy. At that time, although there was no concrete thing such as advanced instruments and equipment as CT to judge where the lesion was, the structure of human abdomen was not as complicated as that of brain. Maybe laparotomy is just a relatively simple operation.
Many people suffer from abdominal trauma, and they can be recovered with simple gold wound medicine. It shows that the survival rate of open surgery is relatively large. Of course, there are cases of failure. It's just that there are not too many records in history, so we have no way to verify them.
2. About Ma Feisan.
There are different opinions about the formula of Mafeisan, and some people even say that this medicine does not exist at all. Now that we have more advanced anesthetics, we can achieve general anesthesia, so the research on what formula Mafeisan is is not particularly active.
but we can be sure that even if we can't do modern medical level general anesthesia. With Hua Tuo's skill to achieve local anesthesia, or to make patients unconscious, such drugs must exist.
You can even achieve the same effect by acupuncture and moxibustion. Even if the patient is conscious and the operation is very painful, it is better than losing his life. Therefore, whether there is hemp boiling powder or general anesthesia can not affect Hua Tuo's surgery.
groundless talk is not without cause. Biography of Hua Tuo in the Three Kingdoms written by Chen Shou in the Western Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty. In the Biography of Hua Tuo in the Later Han Dynasty written by Fan Ye, there is a detailed description of Hua Tuo's laparotomy with Mafeisan. If there is no evidence at all, it is impossible to spread vividly to this day.