CENTENARY OF ANAESTHESIA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 31 May 1930, Page 13

CENTENARY OF ANAESTHESIA

A COMMEMORATION: The death of Henry Hill Hickman, tho father of English anaesthetics, which occurred a century ago, was commemorated in Ijondon recently when an address was delivered by Lord Dawson of Penn._ He traced tho various steps in tho discovery of anaesthesia until Hickman, a practitioner in Ludlow, Shropshire, conceived" the possibility of inducing insensibility as a means of alleviating the sufferings inflicted by surgical operations. Further, he was the first to put his ideas to the test of cxperimenT;. Hickman iendered animals unconse'ous, first through partial asphyxiation t y itho exclusion of air, then by inhalation or carbonic acid, and later of nitrous oxide. During anaesthesia ho made incisions, applied ligatures, amputated ears and limbs, and without pain and with good surgical results. His earnest purpose was to extend the benefit of his findings lo man: but work to which he had sacrificed his career failed of recognition alike iti Franco and England. Hickman returned home and died shortly afterward at the age of 29. It was not until 1842 that a young dentist, Crawford Long, used ether for a definite surgical purpose. Then Wells, in 1844, employed nitrous oxide for anaesthesia. Morton, unaware of Long's work, administered ether in Massachusetts General Hospital pi 1846—the first public use -of anaesthesia. Then a year later JFlourcns described the effects of chloroform on the lower animals, and following this chloroform was employed at St. Bartholomew's Hospital by Sir William Law-i rence and in Edinburgh by Sir James Simpson. "It is interesting to inquire ; why these man yyears separated the discovery from the adoption of anaesthesia," Lord Dawson added. "Was it because Great Britain was passing through a phase of apathy—of mind and perhaps also of feeling—which led to insensitiveness toward suffering? The necessity and even the pride of rapid i operating may have excluded other considerations from surgeons' minds. The great List on prided himself on being able to amputate a leg at the hip joint in under a minute. Hickman, though a. young country practitioner, had the mind to see, the heart to feel, what anaesthesia meant for humanity—and strove to move bis profession in England and France to action. Honour is his' due, and it is our privilege and happiness to perpetuate his fame." j