Fig. 1. Time courses of experimental incision-evoked pain and subsequent spontaneous pain determined by the visual analog scale (VAS) in trials of pretraumatic injection of saline (open circles) and lidocaine (filled circles). Pretraumatic injection of lidocaine almost completely suppressed the incision-evoked pain and subsequent spontaneous pain. *P < 0.001 versus  the saline injection trials. Data are shown as mean ± SEM.