Medicine: Shocked to Sleep

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Relaxed from a tranquilizer, the 65-year-old woman, an abdominal cancer victim, lay quietly on an operating table in the University of Mississippi's Medical Center. Anesthesiologist Leonard Fabian opened her mouth, sprayed a local anesthetic on her throat, inserted an "airway tube" to ensure unobstructed breathing. Under the watchful eye of Surgeon James Hardy, Dr. Fabian attached a tiny electrode to each of the woman's temples. At his signal, a technician turned a control on the face of a small box from which thin wires trailed out to the electrodes. Within 60 seconds the woman was sound asleep, and the operation began—first ever performed in the U.S. under electrical anesthesia.

Because sending electric currents through the brain can produce death and convulsions, scientists have long suspected that they could anesthetize surgical patients by some precise combination of voltage, current and frequency. To the U.S. Army, the idea was especially attractive : it was hunting for a safe, simple way to anesthetize battlefield patients without the use of bulky, expensive gas equipment. With Army funds, doctors at the University of Mississippi, experimenting with dogs and monkeys, set out to construct a cheap mobile unit that could be used to shock human patients to sleep.

"Most of the difficulty arises in the fine line that separates anesthesia from convulsions," says Lieut. Colonel John Moncrief, who monitored the project. The Mississippi machine, although still experimental, looks promising: it puts the patient to sleep, keeps him under as long as the current remains constant, permits him to awaken within 60 seconds after the juice is turned off. It uses 22-30 volts, 50 milliamperes, and a frequency that is brought up from 0 to 700 cycles to put the patient under. It causes some spasms, which drugs easily stop, but produces no convulsions, loss of memory or even headache. Its price: $150. Commented the first patient: "I didn't feel a thing."