MEDICAL DEVICE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 169, 19 July 1941, Page 7

MEDICAL DEVICE

Machine For The Vapourising Of Liquid Anaesthetics LORD XUFFIEIjD'S SUPPORT Rec. noon. LONDON, July 18. A new anaesthetic device, which automatically makes available vapours from liquid anaesthetic, has been perfected in the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics at Oxford University. Lord Nuffield is providing 1000 of these machines, which cost £25 each, for the Services. The machines work without the customary gas cylinders, and the patient breathes through a machine in which ingenious use is made of chemical substance which ensures that the vapour from the liquid anaesthetic will be inhaled in concentrations exactly as the doctor desires. A particularly valuable feature to the Services is the transport economy: for example, the machine converts a one-pint bottle of liquid ether into 5000 times that volume of gaseous ether to be used as anaesthetic. The medical journal, "The Lancet," gives unprecedented space to the new anaesthetic device, which will be known as "The Oxford Vaporiser. The head of the Department of Anaesthetics at Oxford University is a New- Zealander, Professor Robert Reynolds Macintosh, who was appointed to the chair of anaesthetics in 1937. Professor Macintosh was born in Timaru on October 17, 1897, and educated at Waitaki. He trained at Guv's Hospital, London, and was formerly anaesthetist and lecturer to [the Anaesthesia Univereiiy College > HnSPitaL