Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/292

282 be drawn out, it occurred to Dr. Bier, of Kiel, who was the true genius of the discovery, that a few drops of a cocaine solution might be put in, to produce local anaesthæsia on a large scale. He worked out the technique of the injection, operated on conscious patients, and reported his success. Although the operations and experiments performed by Bier were published and commented on with interest, they aroused no special excitement beyond a small circle of investigators, and might have remained merely scientific experiments, had it not been for the International Medical Congress, which met at the Paris Exposition. The benefit of the interchange of thought of the ablest scientific men of all countries that is offered by these congresses, which have come into fashion in the last twenty-five years, is incalculable. Every medical journal in every language tells the physician and surgeon of something new, but every day's experience teaches him that it is better to pay attention to the workings of old laws, instead of trying to apply every new remedy; therefore, it was not surprising that even so great a discovery should meet tardy recognition, and should need the dramatic setting of a world exposition to place it prominently before the medical profession. This it obtained at the Paris clinics held by M. Tuffier, where, with all nations for eye-witnesses, he performed one operation after another on patients who were perfectly conscious and yet who were absolutely insensible to pain below the nipple line. His feats were the talk of the Congress; many of the most famous surgeons of the world were present and saw how comparatively simple it was, after first rendering the point of puncture insensible with a little cocaine, to cause the patient to lean forward, as if scorching on a bicycle, thus straining the vertebræ slightly apart, when it was easy to insert the hypodermic needle until the appearance of a few drops of the spinal fluid showed that the cord had been tapped, and then to attach the syringe and inject the cocaine solution.

The surgeons soon dispersed to their own parts of the planet, glorifying the deeds of Tuffier, almost forgetting Bier, who was Tuffier's authority, and never mentioning Corning, from whom came the original idea. But the question of homage was insignificant in comparison with the test of the idea, and, within a few months, the members of the Congress had, in their own clinics and practice, cocainized the spinal cord for laparotomies, amputations and childbearing, with a varying amount of success.

But, in spite of the fact that in some operations the patients left the operating table with almost no unpleasant sensations, yet in the majority there was dizziness, nausea and frightful headache, which in some cases lasted as long as eight days, in spite of everything to bring relief.