[Carl Ludwig Schleich--pioneer exclusively in infiltration anesthesia?].

The development of local anaesthesia is connected with the name of Carl Ludwig Schleich, a Berlin surgeon. His method, the so-called "infiltration anaesthesia", did not receive due attention from his surgeon colleagues right from the beginning. This, however, was partly a fault of Schleich himself. The initial restraint, however, changed within a few years and became soon known as the "first great medical feat in the discipline of German surgery". At the same time, the fact that he had been rejected in the beginning was criticised as a "disgrace for surgery". Schleich experienced the same ignorance and refusal when he demanded that only specially trained physicians should perform any kind of anaesthesia. Moreover, these specialists should be responsible for the training of younger colleagues, a revolutionary concept at that time in Germany. Unfortunately, all these ideas and efforts of Schleich to develop a new concept of anaesthesia techniques have fallen into oblivion, a concept that started with his "infiltration anaesthesia" 100 years ago.