Word: anesthesia
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...pain an inevitable part of childbirth? One grin-&-bear-it school of doctors says it is.* But the search for ways to relieve the mother's pain is as old as civilization. The ancient Egyptians tried herbs, the Chinese opium. Neither worked very well. The coming of anesthesia more than a century ago did not help much. General anesthetics such as chloroform and ether made the patient unconscious, and thus unable to cooperate with the doctor and with nature's attempts to push out the baby...
...with nature. Doctors have tried many anesthetics, always found something wrong. The big drawback to "twilight sleep," popular in the early 1900s; the drugs used (scopolamine or hyoscine hydrobromide, with barbiturates) might, like too much ether and chloroform, poison the baby through the blood of the mother. Continuous caudal anesthesia, first used for childbirth in 1941, has pitfalls for inexperienced doctors (if the needle gets into the spinal canal, the mother may die of an overdose of anesthetic...
Last week, doctors searching for a safe and effective anesthetic seemed nearer their goal. The new technique, gradually improved over the last several years, is a variation of spinal anesthesia (first used for general surgery at the turn of the century). Doctors describe it, in a jawbreaking phrase, as "heavy nupercaine to produce saddle-block anesthesia." Nupercaine is a cocaine substitute. "Heavy" means that it is loaded with a glucose (sugar) solution to make it heavier than the body's spinal fluid. "Saddle block" aptly describes the area anesthetized (the inner thigh and perineum...
...summer of 1925 I offered Mrs. Riddle $20,000 for Anesthesia Faith of Hillstead, whose record of 19,741 milk, 1,112 fat was then the record of the breed. My offer . . . was declined, and the cow died without ever having another calf. When Mrs. Riddle founded Avon Old Farms she by no stretch of the imagination owned a cow worth $60,000 or one-tenth as much...
Sane perusal of the situation finds no legitimate and non-hysterical opinion marshalled against the Bill. The sacrificial dogs, which are killed anyway, die in the cause of science instead of mere sanitation. Medical witnesses at the legislature have repeatedly emphasized that general anesthesia is always employed in animal operations Furthermore, clerical views from all major denominations have contended that no theological tenets oppose regulated vivisection Perhaps the waiting period in the pound for captured canines should be extended from seven to fourteen days, and certainly irresponsible personal experiments should be restricted to discourage such dog torturing as occured...