weeks and one week after injection. Coincidentally with progressive improvement, the electrocardiograms became normal and remained so in both cases for more than six years. A similar modification in the form of the graphic record was reported by Raney,11 after cutting the second, third, fourth and fifth rami communicantes and sectioning the sympathetic chain between the fifth and sixth dorsal ganglions on the left side. The patient had suffered from severe cardiac pain due to disease of the coronary arteries and obtained complete relief. On the second day after operation, the T wave in lead 1, which had been negative, became upright. Such changes in the electrocardiogram furnish at least sug¬ gestive support to the experimental observations of Hall and his collaborators, to which reference has already been made. It seems unlikely that reversal in the direction of the T waves occurring so soon after operation is the result of anatomic changes in the heart. It is more probable that they are due to an altered physiologic state of the coronary circulation, possibly due to release of spasm. If vasoconstriction was thus permanently diminished or abolished, an increase in coronary flow might be anticipated. Perhaps, therefore, interruption of the sensory pathways for pain not only brings relief to the patient but, over a period of time, results in an improvement in the supply of blood to the heart. Should this concept prove to be valid, relief from painful discomfort earlier in the course of coronary disease might be expected to exert a favorable influ¬ ence on its course. Whether, in any of these advanced cases, life was prolonged, it is not possible to say. Certainly, in them, unilateral alcohol block did not pre¬ vent the occurrence of coronary occlusion or of sudden death.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONSFrom the