Norwich bulletin., 1915-05-11
AMERICAN WOMEN
 ARE HYPERsENSITIvE
Feel Pain More Than German Women Their Type Takes Twilight Sleep Best.

pr. Kurt E. SchIossingk of Freiburg,
 Germany, who was sent to this coun- try nearly a year ago, spoke to a large and attentive audience of women Mon day morning at 10 o'clock at the Davis theatre upon the subject of Twilight Sleep, or Dammerschlaf. as 1t is call ed in Germany.
 He told his audience that the Amer ican women have developed a hyper sensitive nervous system and feel pain far more than the average woman in my country, who has been brought up to do more bodily labor and less mental. Through experiments it has been proved that the highly sensi- tive, nervous women take the treat ment best and with the best results.
 Mentioning the race suicide problem he said that for the past few years it has been worrying Americans, and not without reason. But race suicide is due chiefly to the fear women have developed of the pains and perils of motherhood, he stated, and the better education a woman has the more knowledge she has concerning the sub- ject and, in consequence, dreads it more.
 From the earliest times men of all races and countries have been working to discover something whereby they might lessen the suffering of their wo- men in the crises of motherhood.
 The discovery of the twilight sleep
 treatment, seems to offer a solution
 to the search of medical men for so many years. It is not new in Ger
 many where scopolanin has been in
 use as an anesthetic since 1902. The
 aim of the doctors there, however was to find something which would cause
 not anesthesia, but amnesia, or loss of
 memory for words.
 Dr. Schlossingk told of the many ex- per1mentS made toward finding this and how it finally resulted in the dis | covery. In the twilight sleep treat
 ment, injections are given hypodermic- ally, the first dose consisting of 1-140th of grain of scopolamin and one half
 grain of narcotin. After half an hour | or so tests follow and these were explained.
 It is highly essential that the pa tient be neither overdosed nor under
 dosed, and this can be determined only by the memory test. After each injec- also. In fact. the technique of admin istration must be followed carefully or
 the results will not be satisfactory. One reason why so much has been said in opposition to the twilight sleep | treatment is that doctors have admin 1 istered other drugs and told their pa tients that they were having the twi- light sleep treatment. Dr. Schlossingk
 said:
 "We do not claim that every woman | should be given scopolamin, but twi- | light sleep is no longer an experiment. g he declared. 'It has been used in Ber- 1 lin hospitals for eight years, and if there had been bad results the treat
 ment would have been abandoned long ago."
 After telling some of the advantages of the treatment, Dr. Schlossingk spoke of the dangers which are claimed to result from it. One is that it is apt to cause asphyxiated babies. the other than insanity results in the patient. l Through his own experience, the doc | tor denied these claims, for in the same number of twilight sleep cases born asphyxfated by the twilight meth cd than by the other.
 And scopolanin never causes in
 sanity" he declared. Tt may cause l a. slight delirium in some patients, but 1 this never lasts over two hours, and there are no harmful effects on the child.
 Twilight sleep is a blockade of the nervous system, so to speak. The nerves can react without any feeling of
 pain being recorded by the patient. There is no shock to the system when the treatment is used, and therefore
 the woman on whom twilight sleep is | used recovers far more quickly than the one who passes the crisis of moth erhood in the natural way" Motion pictures were shown depict ing the various stages in administering g
 the treatment; pictures taken in a sanitarium under the direct super vision of the Freiburg specialist him
 self. One was of the only negro baby whose mother had taken the twilight sleep method.
 After the pictures, Dr. Schlossingk answered questions that had been written by women in the audience.