Lumbar puncture is one of the more
painful medical procedures available to the discerning practitioner. That's part of why it may be necessary for an adult to restrain the child. But lots of
malpractice suits arise from failure to perform the puncture, so
grab your knees and
bite down on this
gauze.
In the Tuskegee syphilis study (wherein the United States Public Health Service deliberately failed to treat a group of African-American men with syphilis in Alabama during a period from 1932 all the way up to 1972) one of the doctors offered patients "special free treatment" for their disease consisting of a feels-so-yummy lumbar puncture...this procedure was done purely in the interest of the doctors' medical research; there was no possibility of benefit to the patients, and a considerable risk.