Word: ethereal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Does TIME believe in ghosts? If not, I am curious to know why you assumed that the "little man" at the tenth International Congress of Philosophy "was probably the same little man who awoke . . . convinced that while under ether he had discovered the Final Solution to the central problem of existence" [TIME...
...essay on Mechanism in Thought and Morals, Oliver Wendell Holmes reported how he experimentally took ether and, while under it, believed that he had grasped the key to all the mysteries of philosophy. Still remembering it as he came to, he scrawled on paper the all-embracing truth: "A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout." G. P. LAYBOURN JR. Minneapolis, Minn...
...probably the same little man who awoke after a surgical operation, convinced that while under ether he had discovered the Final Solution to the central problem of existence. Unfortunately, the formula stubbornly eluded him. So he had himself put under ether a second time while stenographers stood by to record his revelation. It turned out to be a simple declarative sentence: "The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine...
...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...
...mother & child, take away most of the pain, leave the mother able to cooperate 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...