🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1k1mj7INN8cu@shelley.u.washington.edu>  
forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
> In article <1k0r1tINN5fn@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu>  
chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
> >Would you say that a patient under anesthesia is in pain, he just
> >doesn't feel it? I think that would be an odd use of the term.
>  
> I think that if the anesthetic prevents signals from entering the brain then
> no pain is felt but am less willing to claim a general anesthetic blocks pain
> when it might be the case that it merely blocks the ability to report pain.

The drug scopolamine is often given to women in labor since it
doesn't really make them unconscious so they can cooperate at
least a bit: "push" and all that.  The benefit is that the women
don't remember the experience/pain afterward.

I can't speak from experience (my wife had "natural" with a touch
of demerol), but I understand that women under scopolamine are 
quite verbal, cursing the men who did this to them etc. etc.

Corollary question.  If you don't remember, in what sense
are you conscious?

--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu