RT Book, Section A1 Tsai, Tony A1 Greengrass, Roy A2 Hadzic, Admir SR Print(0) ID 3497585 T1 Chapter 13. Spinal Anesthesia T2 NYSORA Textbook of Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Management YR 2007 FD 2007 PB The McGraw-Hill Companies PP New York, NY SN 9780071449069 LK accessanesthesiology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=3497585 RD 2024/03/28 AB Carl Koller, an ophthalmologist from Vienna, first described the use of topical cocaine for analgesia of the eye in 1884.1 William Halsted and Richard Hall, surgeons at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, took the idea of local anesthesia a step further by injecting cocaine into human tissues and nerves in order to produce anesthesia for surgery.2 James Leonard Corning, a neurologist in New York City, described the use of cocaine for spinal anesthesia in 1885.3 Since Corning was a frequent observer at Roosevelt Hospital, the idea of using cocaine in the subarachnoid space may have come from observing Halsted and Hall performing cocaine injections. Corning first injected cocaine intrathecally into a dog and within a few minutes the dog had marked weakness in the hindquarters.4 Next, Corning injected cocaine into a man at the T11-T12 interspace into what he thought was the subarachnoid space. Since Corning did not notice any effect after 8 min, he repeated the injection. Ten minutes after the second injection, the patient complained of sleepiness in his legs, but was able to stand and walk. Because Corning made no mention of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) efflux, most likely he inadvertently gave an epidural rather than a spinal injection to the patient.