From Sept. 1980 to Jan. 1981 twenty three cases of epidural anesthesia for cesarean section were performed at St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic Medical College, Seoul, Korea. The choice of anesthesia for cesaren section is still controversial. But the popularity of epidural anesthesia for elective cesarean section continues to grow even though the thechnique offers no advantage in terms of the biochemical condition of the mother and child. Marcaine which is a new stable, long-acting local anesthetics, was recently introduced to our department. A comparative study between marcaine and lidocaine application to the lumbar epidural anesthesia was performed. The results were as follows: 1) All of the 0.25% marcaine group revealed inadequate anesthesia for cesarean section. 2) Muscle relaxing effect of the 0.5% Marcaine group was revealted to be inferior to that of 2% lidocaine group. 3) Average time of onset of anesthesia was 24 min with marcaine and 18 min with lidocaine respectively. 4) Duration of single epidural injection of marcaine was 27.9±47 min and that of lidocatine was 122±31 min which revealed the duration of epidural anesthesia with marcaine was longer than that of lidocaine-about one hour. 5) The post operative pain was controlled successfully by means of continuous epidural technique with either 1.0% lidocaine or 0.25% Marcaine.