After five years' effort to synthesize a harmless, efficient local anesthetic, a Columbia University Research physiologist, Dr. Raymond Lester Osborne, in Science last week reported success. Ever since Dr. Carl Roller, an Austrian who now practises ophthalmology in Manhattan, discovered in 1884 that cocaine deadens sensation long enough for a minor operation, doctors worried because i) cocaine may start a bad narcotic habit, 2) cause a dangerous shock to the system. Best substitute has been procaine (usually called novocain), synthesized in 1905 by a German. But procaine causes capillaries to expand. Thus,...
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