RIP Dr. John Severinghaus

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My favorite Severinghaus story. Residents nowadays would get in trouble for similar shenanigans.


“Q. This was nearly a short-lived career in anaesthesia, as I believe you had a run in with some Succinylcholine?​

During my first 6 months at Penn with Peter Safar, we happened to hear that Dr Dripps was going to receive a shipment of a new drug called Succinylcholine. On the day it arrived, I said to Peter, ‘I would be very interested in actually trying this ourselves, just to see what this very fast-acting drug is like’. I opted to be the subject and Peter gave me what we thought was a tiny dose—way too little to really paralyse me. Well, I lay down on an operating table and Peter gave me 20 mg of Succinylcholine intravenously. The first thing I knew was that I could not say anything and I could not breathe. I did not know how to let Peter know, or what I was going to do about it. Well, my arm was still working so I tried to reach over to the anaesthesia machine and lift up the mask to my face. As my arm collapsed, Peter saw what was happening and ventilated me until I recovered. And that was the good part; due to the muscle contractions, I ached for a week afterwards!”

extremephysiolmed.biomedcentral.com

In conversation with…John Wendell Severinghaus - Extreme Physiology & Medicine

extremephysiolmed.biomedcentral.com extremephysiolmed.biomedcentral.com


Edit: For those who don’t know, Safar was instrumental in the development of CPR.
 
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nimbus said:
And that was the good part; due to the muscle contractions, I ached for a week afterwards!
Click to expand...
The things people do for science

First cocaine spinal --> raging PDPH
First succinylcholine --> raging myalgias
 
pgg said:
The things people do for science

First cocaine spinal --> raging PDPH
First succinylcholine --> raging myalgias
Click to expand...
my favorite was the guy who inserted the first central line and confirmed placement radiographically--on himself! Lot of those early doctors were fearless badasses.
 
Fart Daddy Smooth said:
my favorite was the guy who inserted the first central line and confirmed placement radiographically--on himself! Lot of those early doctors were fearless badasses.
Click to expand...

Dude used a really long Foley.


en.m.wikipedia.org

Werner Forssmann - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

“In 1929, while working in Eberswalde, he performed the first human cardiac catheterization. He ignored his department chief and persuaded the operating-room nurse in charge of the sterile supplies, Gerda Ditzen, to assist him. She agreed, but only on the promise that he would do it on her rather than on himself. However, Forssmann tricked her by restraining her to the operating table and pretending to locally anaesthetise and cut her arm whilst actually doing it on himself.[3] He anesthetized his own lower arm in the cubital region and inserted a urinary catheter into his antecubital vein, threading it partly along before releasing Ditzen (who at this point realised the catheter was not in her arm) and telling her to call the X-ray department. They walked some distance to the X-ray department on the floor below where under the guidance of a fluoroscope he advanced the catheter the full 60 cm into his right ventricular cavity. This was then recorded on X-Ray film showing the catheter lying in his right atrium.[3]”
 
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