Word: spinal
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neurology. A branch of medicine that deals with diseases of the nerves, brain and spinal cord...
...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...
Hopeful Future. The new technique has obvious advantages. Because the "heavy" anesthetic is heavier than the spinal fluid, doctors can control its rise in the spine by gravity (by tilting the delivery table until the proper areas are anesthetized). In conventional spinal anesthesia, the anesthetic may rise too far and stop the patient's breathing. Usually only one injection is necessary. It acts quickly (in one to ten minutes), and relief from pain lasts from two to four hours. The patient is so comfortable that, when labor is long, she can eat, drink or smoke...
Years later in Paris, putting aside the things his father taught him, he experimented with paint, bronze, wooden cages, plaster balls, and a model of a nose. He once built a cage-like wooden house, placed the skeleton of a flapping bird in the attic, and a spinal column dangling downstairs, and called the whole thing "The palace...