treating their young patients accordingly. from needle sticks to tonsillectomies to heart operations were done with no anaesthesia or analgesia, other than muscle relaxation for the surgery. the belief was that in babies the expression of pain was reflexive and, owing to the immaturity of the infant brain, the pain could not really matter. cope considers it probable that the belief arose from misinterpretation of discoveries made in the new science of embryology. dr paul flechsig equated the non-myelinisation of much of a baby's nervous system with an inability to function. it was generally believed that babies would not remember any pain that they happened to feel, and that lack of conscious memory meant lack of long-term harm. scientific studies on animals with various brain lesions were interpreted as supporting the idea that the responses seen in babies were merely spinal reflexes. furthermore, the whole effort of relieving pain was considered futile since it was thought to be impossible to measure the child's pain. this, coupled with a concern that use of opiates would lead to addiction, and the time and effort needed to provide adequate analgesia to the newborn, contributed to the medical profession's continued practice of not providing pain relief for babies. mid-1980s in the united states, a major change in practice was brought about by events surrounding one operation. infant jeffrey lawson underwent open heart surgery in 1985. his mother, jill r. lawson, subsequently discovered that he had been operated on without any anaesthesia, other than a muscle relaxant. she started a vigorous awareness campaign which created such a public, and medical, reaction that by 1987 medical opinion had come full circle. a number of studies on the measurement of pain in young children, and on ways of reducing the injury response began, and publications on the hormonal and metabolic responses of babies to pain stimuli began to appear, confirming that the provision of adequate anaesthesia and analgesia was better medicine on both humanitarian and physiological grounds. it is now accepted that the neonate responds more extensively to pain than the adult does, and that exposure to severe pain, without adequate treatment, can have long-term consequences. despite the difficulty of assessing how much pain a baby is experiencing, and the practical problem of prescribing the correct dosage or technique for treatment, modern medicine is firmly committed to improving the quality of pain relief for the very young. the effective treatment of pain benefits the baby immediately, reduces some medium-term negative consequences, and likely prevents a number of adult psycho-physiological problems.