[100 years ago: Oskar Kreis, a pioneer in spinal obstetric analgesia at the University Women's Clinic of Basel].

In 1900, Oskar Kreis (1872-1958), a gynecologist and obstetrician who received his training at the Basle University Women's Hospital, pioneered the use of spinal anaesthesia in six parturients for labour pain relief. Cocaine was used as a local anaesthetic, which had previously been shown to be effective for spinal anaesthesia by August Bier in 1898. This important advance in anaesthetic care was not widely acknowledged for a long period of time and it has only been during the past few decades that spinal anaesthesia was rediscovered as an important technique available for obstetric anaesthesia.