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,→Investigating pain of circumcision: Add text and citation.
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}}</ref> Incredible as it may seem today, his idea was accepted without question and without being tested.<ref name="vanhowe2008">{{REFjournal |last=Van Howe |first=Robert S |init= |author-link=Robert S. Van Howe |last2=Svoboda |first2=J. Steven |init2= |author2-link=J. Steven Svoboda |etal=no |title=Neonatal pain relief and the Helsinki Declaration |trans-title= |language= |journal=Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics |location= |date=2008-12 |volume=36 |issue=4 |article= |page= |pages=803-23 |url=https://www.academia.edu/download/33981944/27_Van_Howe.pdf |archived= |quote= |pubmedID=19094008 |pubmedCID= |DOI=10.1111/j.1748-720X.2008.00339.x |accessdate=2021-10-31}}</ref>
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 of empirical of research carried out in the 1970s suggested that infants can in fact feel intense pain.<ref name="vanhowe2008" />
* 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
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Anand & Hickey (1987) published a paper in the ''New England Journal of Medicine'' that totally demolished Flechsig's ridiculous claims and conclusively proved that newborn infants are capable of feeling intense pain. After publication of this paper, no doubt about pain sensation in infants remained. The article stated:
<blockquote>
<i>Numerous lines of evidence suggest that even in the human fetus, pain pathways as well as cortical and subcortical centers necessary for pain perception are well developed late in gestation, and the neurochemical systems now known to be associated with pain transmission and modulation are intact and functional. Physiologic responses to painful stimuli have been well documented in neonates of various gestational ages and are reflected in hormonal, metabolic, and cardiorespiratory changes similar to but greater than those observed in adult subjects. Other responses in newborn infants are suggestive of integrated emotional and behavioral responses to pain and are retained in memory long enough to modify subsequent behavior patterns.</i><ref name="anand1987" /> <ref name="vanhowe2008" />
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