The New York Herald's Very First Report on Dr. Horace Well's Arrest and Suicide-An Original Article Found in New York City Public Library.

The accounts of Dr. Wells' personal life, particularly those of his tempestuous final days, have remained somewhat speculative. On January 24, 1848, a troubled Dr. Wells raced outside of his home and practice on Chambers Street and threw sulfuric acid (vitriol) on two alleged "loose" Broadway girls. We were able to find an original copy of an article published by the New York Herald in the New York City Public Library describing the events of Well's final days.

Horace Wells and His House on 120 Chambers St in New York City.

On January 24, 1848, delirious from chloroform, Horace Wells rushed from his house and office on 120 Chambers St into the street and threw acid on 2 alleged prostitutes. He was arrested and committed to New York's infamous Tombs Prison (currently Manhattan Detention Complex), where he committed suicide. Remodeled and reconstructed, this house, 120 Chambers St, is still standing in Tribeca District.

O-arm failure traps patient prone on a Jackson table.

The O-arm Surgical Imaging System (Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Memphis, TN, USA) is an increasingly popular tool for spinal surgical procedures that allows for intraoperative acquisition of multi-dimensional spinal imaging that can be used either to confirm placement of spinal instrumentation or to guide spinal screw placement in conjunction with a navigation system. The machine is typically placed open from the side of the patient positioned prone on the Jackson spinal table (Mizuho OSI, Union City, CA, USA) and then closed to complete a ring around the patient to acquire images. A failure of the O-arm opening mechanism can lead to a patient becoming effectively trapped within the device with limited physician access to the patient's body, a situation that may be remedied by using a manual opening procedure. This report highlights a patient safety issue encountered when a mechanical failure of the O-arm occurred and one of the two tools required for its manual opening was missing. We describe the improvised method employed to successfully open the device.

Propofol exposure in pregnant rats induces neurotoxicity and persistent learning deficit in the offspring.

Propofol is a general anesthetic widely used in surgical procedures, including those in pregnant women. Preclinical studies suggest that propofol may cause neuronal injury to the offspring of primates if it is administered during pregnancy. However, it is unknown whether those neuronal changes would lead to long-term behavioral deficits in the offspring. In this study, propofol (0.4 mg/kg/min, IV, 2 h), saline, or intralipid solution was administered to pregnant rats on gestational day 18. We detected increased levels of cleaved caspase-3 in fetal brain at 6 h after propofol exposure. The neuronal density of the hippocampus of offspring was reduced significantly on postnatal day 10 (P10) and P28. Synaptophysin levels were also significantly reduced on P28. Furthermore, exploratory and learning behaviors of offspring rats (started at P28) were assessed in open-field trial and eight-arm radial maze. The offspring from propofol-treated dams showed significantly less exploratory activity in the open-field test and less spatial learning in the eight-arm radial maze. Thus, this study suggested that propofol exposure during pregnancy in rat increased cleaved caspsase-3 levels in fetal brain, deletion of neurons, reduced synaptophysin levels in the hippocampal region, and persistent learning deficits in the offspring.