For some time I have been employing a phonograph in my operating-room as a means of calming and distracting my patients from the horror of the situation when going under the anesthetic and during operations performed partially or entirely with local anesthesia. The phonograph talks, sings or plays on, no matter how anxious, busy or abstracted the surgeon, anesthetist and assistants may be, and fills the ears of the perturbed patient with agreeable sounds and his mind with other thoughts than that of his present danger. Too often when told to keep up an agreeable conversation with our patients operated on under “local,” the assistants merely ask again and again if the sufferer is being hurt or if he feels ary pain, thus only adding to the self-consciousness of the patient, and, after weather commonplaces are exhausted, it seems impossible to find a topic for conversation of…
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