History of neuraxial anesthesia

[8] Also in 1885, James Leonard Corning (1855–1923) injected cocaine between the spinous processes of the lower lumbar vertebrae, first in a dog and then in a healthy man.

Despite this much higher dose, the onset of analgesia in Corning's human subject was slower and the dermatomal level of ablation of sensation was lower.

[15][16] In 1921, Spanish military surgeon Fidel Pagés (1886–1923) developed the modern technique of lumbar epidural anesthesia,[17] which was popularized in the 1930s by Italian surgery professor Achille Mario Dogliotti [it] (1897–1966).

[18] Eugen Bogdan Aburel (1899–1975) was a Romanian surgeon and obstetrician who in 1931 was the first to describe blocking the lumbar plexus during early labor, followed by a caudal epidural injection for the expulsion phase.

[19][20] Beginning in October 1941, Robert Andrew Hingson (1913–1996), Waldo B. Edwards and James L. Southworth, working at the United States Marine Hospital at Stapleton, on Staten Island in New York, developed the technique of continuous caudal anesthesia.

Hingson and Edwards studied the caudal region to determine where a needle could be placed to deliver anesthetic agents safely to the spinal nerves without injecting them into the cerebrospinal fluid.

[23] The first use of continuous caudal anesthesia in a laboring woman was on January 6, 1942, when the wife of a United States Coast Guard sailor was brought into the Marine Hospital for an emergency Caesarean section.