A Report ON CLINICAL EXPERIENCES WITH SPINAL ANALGESIA IN 100 CASES, AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PROCEDURE

AT the outset of this communication I wish to disclaim all intention of advocating the immediate or general intro- duction of spinal analgesia.This essay is only intended to be a report on a series of 100 cases in which the pro- cedure was employed tentatively during the last year the ordinary course of hospital study, with some flections on its many aspects.I have approached subject without any prepossessions and with a due eense of its seriousness, not feeling justified, with the abundant evidence before us as to its possibilities, in putting it as either necessarily dangerous or unpractical.For must not be forgotten that more than eight years elapsed since August 16th, 1898, when spinal analgesia was first produced by Bier with cocaine, and that later he requested his assistant to inject his own sac to observe its effects.On the same day jected his assistant, and their careful observations1 themselves did much to put the use of cocaine this way in its true position.But only during last three years, since the discovery of stovaine Fourneau, has the procedure come into anything general use.This was due to the frank avowal by