Local anesthetic blocks of the head and neck

Abstract

If there were an award for the most important advance of the last millennium it would be in the author's opinion, hands down, the discovery of local anesthesia. Although it is almost impossible for us in the civilized world to contemplate, it was a cruel world out there. Owing to the inability to obtund severe pain, medicine and dentistry stayed in the dark ages way past the renaissance. A simple tooth extraction or a laceration repair would be an extremely traumatic experience, and in fact just several generations ago. © Springer-Verlag 2008.