Continuous, fractional or serial spinal anesthesia, since its introduction by Lemmon1 on April 10, 1939, has been discussed in several publications, including, among others, those of Popova,2 Nicholson,3 Tuohy,4 Hand and Schuhmacher,5 Leigh and Burford,6 Haugen, Ruth and Taylor,7 Ansbro and Pico,8 Lundy and his associates,9 Apgar,10 Fraser,11 Hale and Shaar12 and Lemmon and Hager.13
The interest in and the usefulness of this type of anesthesia have prompted us to report a series of 1,200 patients on whom operation was performed during continuous spinal anesthesia. A complete study, including adequate postoperative observations, has been made on the first 563 consecutive patients.
Procaine hydrochloride was employed as the anesthetic agent in this series, since, as Lemmon pointed out, its relative toxicity is less than that of metycaine hydrochloride, tetracaine hydrochloride or nupercaine hydrochloride. Procaine hydrochloride both as a 10