After two shots, the girl's attack was not subsiding. The young asthma patient's medical team had already tried to dilate her airways with injections of adrenaline. As part of his training, he was also taking a class in clinical hypnosis. Spiegel was a medical student on a paediatric rotation at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, US, in 1970. It was the third time the girl had been hospitalised for asthma in as many months.
He could hear her wheezing from halfway down the hall.Įntering the patient's room, he saw a 16-year-old girl with red hair sitting bolt upright in bed, knuckles white, in the midst of an asthma attack. When David Spiegel was told his next patient was waiting for him, he didn't need to ask the room number.
