LOCAL ANESTHESIA AGENTS

Abstract

A young girl, in preparation for a minor anal operation, was given an injection of 15 cc. of a 2 per cent solution of procaine. Within three minutes clonic convulsions of her whole body began. She was in our clinic before students, and I told them that the convulsions would last about five seconds and then she would return to normal. Such had been my experience in two similar cases which I reported before this society in St. Louis in 1922 as idiosyncrasies to procaine, and in the discussion at that time it was decided that the reaction was due to epinephrine. This girl was kept alive for perhaps half an hour, when she died of respiratory failure. She could have been saved from death by the method presented today for emergency treatment, and the distressing experience could have been entirely avoided by the preliminary preparation which I have now