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Pain
,→Investigating pain of circumcision: Revise text.
As a result, medical doctors performed all manners of invasive, painful procedures on neonates without anesthesia or analgesia, including millions upon millions of painful circumcisions and even open heart surgery. Open heart surgery was performed with curare to paralyze the infant but without any anesthesia.
Flechsig's bizarre opinion was not questioned until the 1970s. Several lines empirical of research carried out in the 1970s suggested that infants do can in fact feel intense pain.
* Anders ''et al''. (1970) showed that measurement of serum cortisol is a useful indicator of pain for psychological investigation in infancy.<ref name="anders1970">{{REFjournal
|last=Anders
|init=TF
}}</ref>
* Richards, Bernal & Brackbill (1976) discovered reported behavioral differences between American boys (circumcised) and British boys (genitally intact).<ref name="richards1976">{{REFjournal
|last=Richards
|init=MPM
}}</ref>
* Rawlings, Miller & Engel (1980) showed that as the pain of circumcision increased, oxygenation of the skin decreased.<ref name="rawlings1980">{{REFjournal
|last=Rawlings
|init=DJ
}}</ref>
* Gunnar ''et al''. (1981) recorded serum cortisol and behavior state through throughout the unanesthetized, non-therapeutic circumcision process. Serum cortisol levels and behavior state behavioral distress were found to be closely related. The authors stated:
<blockquote>
Neonatal circumcision is performed without anesthesia and it is clearly stressful for the infant.
</blockquote>
The authors were still unwilling to use the word ''pain'' and substituted the word ''stress''. <ref>{{REFjournal
|last=Gunnar
|init=MR