BANISHMENT OF PAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20364, 19 September 1929, Page 14

BANISHMENT OF PAIN.

ANESTHESIA RESEARCH.

1 Vt DR. McMECHAN'S LABOURS.

WONDERS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

[from our own correspondent.]

SYDNEY. Sept. 12

Of the outstanding personalities at the Medical Congress in Sydney—and there were not a few big men in the fields of surgery and medicine at that great assemblage—ono of tho most remarkablo was tho little, elderly, quietly-spoken man who is one of tho world's greatest authorities in the humanitarian field of anesthesia research—Dr. F. H. McMechan, of Ohio, United States, who visitpd Now Zealand in August prior to tho opening of tho congress. Ho was an unobtrusive figure, and spoke seldom, not only because of his innate modesty, but also because of tho tragedy that camo into his life about 15 years ago, when ho was forced into an invalid's chair.

Dr. McMechan in his chair moves cheerfully round tho world, in company with his charming wife. In a world where people aro daily whining about their trivial little ills, not a few of them imaginary, it was a pleasux-o to bask in the sunshine of this little man's cheerful, buoyant company. A disability which has left him without the use of his legs and his hands he regards as a compensation, if anything, for it has necessarily turned him from tho active practice of his profession to the great passion of his life—anesthesia research for the banishment of pain in operations, to which, with a staff, he can apply his genius, if not his manual labours. Associated with the International Anesthesia Research Society, Dr. McMechan is truly a wonderful man. At tho Sydney University, where the congress met, he was being wheeled one day across a rather rough path to the Medical School. Ho was obviously getting a rather bad passage, but he smiled it off. "This is nothing," ho observed, "to the trip across to Sydney in the boat."

In an interview, Dr. McMechan told a remarkable story of the latest processes of anesthesia, adding some particulars not given by him in the interviews in New Zealand. Even agriculture, ho says, lias done its bit .toward relieving pain even in the most delicate surgical cases. Tho glutinous covering of tho wheat kernel, for example, provides a substance known as gLiadin, which, when adde4 to tho local anesthetic that is injected into tho spinal canal, gives tho surgeon complete control. By merely tilting tho patient, it is explained, gliadin carries tho pain-rclioving drug direct to those nerve trunks that run to the region that is to be operated upon. This wonderful gliadin does more. It so slows up the absorption of tho anesthetic that relief from pain lasts even aitcr the patient's operation.

What, too, of Dr. McMechan's story of an age-old drug of Chinas—ephedrine—• which has just been introduced into Western medicine, and has been found to offset entirely a patient's depression under 'spinal anesthesia. The old Chinese drug has made anesthesia safe in such cases where, formerly, it was regarded as somewhat dangerous. No less interesting is the fact that this drug grows in ono of tho greatest famine districts of China.