WITHIN the past year, increasing interest has developed in the palliation of various types of head and neck cancer by the intra-arterial injection of chemotherapeutic agents.¹ The patients treated were those in whom further surgical or irradiation therapy was no longer feasible, and in whom the persistent lesions were causing marked symptoms as the result of either the location of the lesion or the severe pain.

This case is reported because of the dramatic relief of the intense pain to demonstrate the histological effect of the chemotherapeutic agent on the tumor and its bed, to describe a hitherto unreported complication, and to suggest a method by which this complication might be eliminated in the treatment of future similarly selected cases.

REPORT OF CASEÌý The patient, a 63-year-old white man, was admitted to the hospital in March, 1950, with the complaint of pain along the left posterior margin of his