The Surgeon Benedetto Schiassi and the First Spinal Anesthesia in Italy

Dear Editor,
The history of medicine reports that the first spinal anesthesia in the world was performed on August 16, 1898 by the German surgeon August Bier at the Royal Surgical Hospital of the university of Kiel. The surgical intervention performed was the resection of a tuberculous ankle joint in a 34-year-old laborer patient who had previously suffered severe adverse effects during general anesthesia. Bier’s clinical decision consisted in the administration of cocaine at the lumbar spinal level, with the aim of anesthetizing only the lower limbs. The name given to it by the German surgeon was “cocainization of the spinal cord”. The use of this new method was published by Bier himself [1]. The journal Anesthesiology recalled the event in 1998, underlining its relevance, success and widespread diffusion, in an editorial entitled “The Centennial of Spinal Anesthesia” [2].