NEGLECTED PIONEER

Northern Advocate, 16 June 1930, Page 6

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 ho carried out a series of successful experiments, using carbonic acid gas upon animals, which led the way to what is now a commonplace—tiie painless operation. In his methods of research Hickman was far in advance of his time.

His work was received with almost complete neglect by the .medical and scientific world of liis time, and in IS2S, despairing of doing anything in England, he went to France 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 some twenty years later that interest was roused in his work. The first operation under anaesthetic —ether—was performed in 184:0 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 Penn addressed the anaesthetic section of the Poyal Society of Medicine on Hickman’s work. To an outside ob server it seems 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 Avovk was either ignored or subjected to contemptuous criticism, and until Dr Henry Wellcome formed his famous museum just before the Avar Hickman was unknoAvn. Hickman died at Teriba ry, and his home, uoav a chemist•’? shop, is still to be seen there.