mind, seems a hopelessly incurable injury or malformation. This
particular patient had a crippled and paralyzed leg, and to restore
its usefulness, it was necessary to cut deeply into the heel,
stretch the "Achilles tendon," and make other changes which, without
the usual anesthetic, would involve excruciating suffering.
According to the attendant nurses, the child belonged to the "noisy"
class; that is, he was extremely sensitive to pain, screamed at the
approach of the surgeon, and could be examined only when forcibly
held down.

As the child came into the operating-room he presented an extremely
pathetic figure--small, naked, thin, with a closely cropped head of
black hair, and a face pinched and blanched with fear. Surrounded by
a fair-sized army of big, muscular surgeons and white-clothed
nurses, and a gallery filled with a hundred or more of the leading
medical men of the metropolis, he certainly seemed a helpless speck
of humanity with all the unknown forces of science and modern life
arrayed against him. Under ordinary conditions he would have been
etherized in an adjoining chamber and brought into the
operating-room entirely unconscious. This cripple, however, had
been selected as a favorable subject for an interesting experiment
in modern surgery, for he was to undergo an extremely torturous
operation in a state of full consciousness.

Among the assembled surgeons was a large-framed, black moustached
and black-haired, quick-moving, gypsy-like Rumanian--Professor
Thomas Jonnesco, dean of the Medical Department of the University of
Bucharest, and one of the leading men of his profession in Europe.
Dr. Jonnesco, who had landed in New York only two days before, had
come to the United States with a definite scientific purpose. This