Embryo Project Encyclopedia Articles

In the late nineteenth century, August Karl Gustav Bier was a surgeon in Germany who studied spinal cord anesthesia, later called spinal block. Bier found that, depending upon the amount of anesthesia introduced into the spinal cord, a large area of the human body could be numbed to various degrees. Bier established a procedure to numb individuals from the lower legs to the upper abdomen, with the individual’s numbness ranging from them feeling pressure on their body to them feeling nothing at all. Bier’s spinal block was one of the first instances of regional anesthesia, or numbing a large area of the body, as opposed to only local anesthesia, or numbing a small area of the body. Bier’s development of spinal anesthesia led to improved pain management during major surgeries, including cesarean sections and amputations.

Ian Donald was an obstetrician who developed the technology and therapy of ultrasound diagnostics during the twentieth century in Europe. Ultrasound is a medical diagnostic technique that uses sound waves to produce images of the inside of the body. During the early 1900s, physicians had no way to see inside a woman’s uterus during pregnancy. Donald developed the first method of scanning human internal anatomy in real time, which enabled doctors to diagnose potentially fatal tumors and cysts. Donald’s development of ultrasound imaging enabled doctors and midwives to more accurately track fetal development and prevent potential health problems.