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On Wed, 11 Oct 1995, Roderick Farb wrote:

 Re: David's post about incipient anesthesia and George's elation over 
 terminology.  From the literature "Incipient" is a good term to use in 
 relating high pN2 narcosis in diving to anesthesia. Incipient means, 
 "about to become". In a medical school text entitled, "A Practice of 
 Anesthesia" (Wylie and Churchill-Davidson) by Healy and Cohen, MDs, 6th 
 Ed. 1995, in the chapter about nitrogen and other inert gas anesthesia, I 
 quote. "N2 is essentially anesthetic at partial pressures greater than 30 
 atmospheres". " Although anesthetic partial pressures are produced by 
 hyperbaric exposures [to N2] of much GREATER (emphasis mine) magnitude 
 than those used for underwater diving, more subtle CNS effects may be 
 observed at lessor pressures including euphoria and impairment of 
 judgement." Further, in Stedman's Medical Dictionary (36 MD editors), 
 narcosis is defined as "general and nonspecific reversible depression of 
 neuronal excitability, produced by a number of physical and chemical agents, 
 usually resulting in stupor rather than anesthesia." "The use of the term 
 narcosis as a synonym for anesthesia is obsolescent."  Stuporous 
 condition is a better synonym for nitrogen narcosis. Rod 
 

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