Although post-operative pain has decided advantages as a testing ground for drugs there are certain fundamental difficulties: how can pain be graded and how can its relief be assessed? How, indeed, can we obtain any knowledge of another person's feelings? These questions threaten to carry us deep into the realms of philosophy and experimental psychology but they are, nevertheless, important at a purely clinical level, for there are many pain-relieving drugssome new, some old, mostly good, none perfect. How are we to

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Four analgesic drugs--fentanyl, phenoperidine, morphine and pethidine--were compared in a double-blind trial involving 113 patients paralysed and ventilated with nitrous oxide and oxygen. The differences between the drugs were relatively small. There were only slight differences in "duration of action", a term which is questioned in this context. Pethidine appeared to have a slightly longer duration of action than the other drugs. The problems inherent in studying analgesics in this manner are discussed.

Awareness during surgery is still an unsolved problem. Cases are sporadic, and often occur seemingly without cause, and without the patient having shown any untoward signs during the conduct of the anesthesia. Recently it has been shown that many patients may be demonstrated to have retained their sense of hearing during anœsthesia, but at a subconscious level. This paper discusses the possible implication of this finding on the phenomenon of awareness during surgery.