was to show American surgeons that the most difficult operations
could be performed without pain, without loss of consciousness, and
without the use of the familiar anesthetics, ether or chloroform.
Dr. Jonnesco's reputation in itself assured him the fullest
opportunity of demonstrating his method in New York, and this
six-year-old boy had been selected as an excellent test subject.

Under the gentle assurances of the nurses that "no one was going to
hurt" him, the boy assumed a sitting posture on the operating-table,
with his feet dangling over the edge. Then, at the request of Dr.
Jonnesco, he bent his head forward until it almost touched his
breast. This threw the child's back into the desired position--that
of the typical bicycle "scorcher,"--making each particular vertebra
stand out sharply under the tight drawn skin. Dr. Jonnesco quickly
ran his finger along the protuberances, and finally selected the
space between the twelfth dorsal and the first lumbar vertebræ--in
other words, the space just above the small of the back. He then
took an ordinary hypodermic needle, and slowly pushed it through the
skin and tissues until it entered the small opening between the
lower and upper vertebræ, not stopping until it reached the open
space just this side of the spinal cord.

As the needle pierced the flesh, the little patient gave a sharp
cry--the only sign of discomfiture displayed during the entire
operation. When the hollow needle reached its destination, a few
drops of a colorless liquid spurted out--the famous cerebro-spinal
fluid, the substance which, like a water-jacket, envelops the brain
and the spinal cord. Into this same place Dr. Jonnesco now
introduced an ordinary surgical syringe, which he had previously
filled with a pale yellowish liquid--the much-famed stovaine,--and