Based on the suggestion by Corning,1in 1885, that the intervertebral injection of cocaine solution would produce anesthesia sufficient for operations on the urethra and perineum, and on the perfection of the method of lumbar spinal puncture by Quincke2in 1891, the production of surgical anesthesia was established by the intrathecal injection of cocaine by Bier,3in 1899, and by Tait and Caglieri4in 1900. The development of stovaine by Fourneau,5in 1904, and of procaine (novocain) by Einhorn,6in 1905, not to mention the many other compounds used, and the clinical and technical methods developed by Barker,7Babcock,8Labat,9Pitkin10and others have served to establish spinal anesthesia firmly as an anesthetic agent in the armamentarium of the surgeon. That the newer anesthetics and the methods of their administration and control have less disagreeable pharmacologic and physiologic manifestations than