NEGLECTED PIONEER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 136, 12 June 1930, Page 4

NEGLECTED PIONEER

HENRY HICKMAN

DISCOVERED ANAESTHESIA

Justice was done to a neglected pioneer when the centenary of the death of Henry Hill Hickman was celebrated at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, says the "Manchester. Guardian." Hickman, who was a village doctor in Shropshire, made a discovery of the greatest importance in surgery—namely, the possibility of anaesthesia by inhalation. In 1800 Sir Humphrey Davy had suggested the use of nitrous oxide in operations, but nothing was done. Hickman was the real pioneer in anaesthetics, for he carried out a series of successful experiments, using carbonic acid gas upon animals, which led the way to what is now a commonplace—the painless operation. In his methods of research Hickman was far in advance of hia time. His work was received with almost complete neglect by the medical and scientific world of his time, and in 1828, despairing of doing-anything in England, he Went to Prance and made an apparently fruitless appeal to interest the medical world there. He died a disappointed man a hundred years ago. It was not until gome twenty years later that interest was roused in his work. The first operation under anaesthetics—«ther—was performed in 1846 by Dr. Richard Liston in London, and in the following year Sir James Simpson, who had already used ether in midwifery, announced his discovery of chloroform. After all these years adequate recognition is being paid to Hickman. An interesting collection of letters and other memorials relating to his experiments and propaganda has been, made at the museum, and Lord Dawson of Perm addressed the anaesthetic sefction of the Royal Society of Medicine on Hickman's work. To an outside observer it geems a remarkable example of scientific conservatism that, although in 1824 Hickman published a full account of his discovery with all the materials for judgment, his work was either ignored or subjected to contemptuous criticism, and until Dr. Henry Wellcome formed his famous museum just beI fore the war Hickman was unknown. Hickman died at Tenbury, and his home, now a chemist's shop, is still to be seen there. . ■