Spinal analgesia : development and present status of the method : with brief summary of personal experience in 1,065 cases / William Seaman Bainbridge.

  • Bainbridge, William Seaman, 1870-1947.
Date:
1912
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Spinal analgesia : development and present status of the method : with brief summary of personal experience in 1,065 cases / William Seaman Bainbridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PEESENT STATUS OE THE METHOD WITH BRIEF SUMMARY OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN 1,065 CASES * WILLIAM SEAMAN BAINBRIDGE, Sc.D., M.D. NEW YORK Spinal analgesia proves no exception to the general rule which applies to new methods. Its early develop- ment was fraught with mistakes, some of which were serious and even fatal. When it was heralded through- out the world that Bier had successfully injected cocain into the spinal subarachnoid space, many surgeons adopted the method. It was a new field and little was definitely known concerning the physiologic aspects of the question, and little more with reference to the thera- peutic phases of the subject. It, was but natural that, as the literature of spinal analgesia developed, the number of unfortunate experiences multiplied. It was inevitable, too, that enthusiasm should wane, and that the further development of the method should be left to a limited number of surgeons who recognized in spinal analgesia a procedure of distinct advantage, with a definite field of usefulness. Eollowing Bier’s first demonstrations of the surgical application of spinal analgesia, report of which was published in 1899, the method was quite. extensively employed for two or three years. Accounts of its use then disappeared almost entirely from medical and sur- gical literature, though it was not abandoned by the few earnest advocates of the method. The revival of the subject in the literature about five years ago is familiar to all. It is safe to assume that spinal analgesia is now permanently established among recognized surgical pro- * Read in the Symposium on Anesthesia in the joint meeting of the Section on Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the Section on Pathology and Physiology of the American Medical Association, at the Sixty-Third Annual Session, held at Atlantic City, June, ISM*?.