A Surgical Demonstration.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 284, 5 June 1895, Page 2

A Surgical Demonstration.

A demonstration of a new method of producing local antesthesia took place in the operating theatre of the Sydney hospital recently, at the instance ot the New South Wales branch of the British Medical Association. Upwards of seventy members of the medical profession assembled to witness the demonstration of the method, which was introduced by Dr Schleich, of Berlin, and which created considerable interest at the recent international congress. The method consists of injecting into the tissues about to be operated upon an innocuous saline solution, which enables the operators to perform operations even of a most serious nature without any consciousness of pain on the part of the patien^. The explanation of this remarkable action, given by Dr Schleiph, is that the pressure of the fluid so introduced, and perhaps also its temperature — which is, of course, lower than of the blood — paralyses the fine terminations of the nerves. The demonstration was completed by the performance of two operations in. the presence of the assembled members of the profession, by whom the result was regarded as highly satisfactory. One of the operations consisted in the removal of a fetid tumor and the other in the excision of a varicose vein.