JMS Pearce
Hull, England

The dramatic benefits of ether anesthesia spread astonishingly quickly from the New World to the Old.^1-3 James Robinson (1813–1862), a Guy’s Hospital trained dental surgeon, practiced at 14 Gower Street. A few doors away lived Francis Boott, an American expatriate physician. The Royal Mail steamship Acadia, on 16 December 1846, docked in the Mersey conveying a letter of Morton’s successful demonstration. On 17 December 1846, Boott received this letter from Jacob Bigelow at the MGH describing how Morton had used ether anesthesia during an operation.² Only two days later, on 19 December, in Boott’s home at 24 Gower Street, Robinson administered ether to a young woman undergoing a molar tooth extraction—the first use of general anesthesia in England (Fig 1).

Robinson used a homemade vaporizer (subsequently modified) and demonstrated his technique to John Snow (1813–58) and to Robert Liston (1794–1847). Without delay, the mercurial surgeon Liston successfully amputated a patient’s leg under ether anesthesia at University College Hospital on 21 December 1846. William Scott and James McLauchlan performed an unspecified operation⁴ using ether at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary on 19 December—two days before Liston, but Scott only briefly published this in 1872.

James Robinson was soon recognized as the foremost anesthetist in England. In March 1847, he published one of the first textbooks on anesthesia: A Treatise on the Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether for the Prevention of Pain in Surgical Operations (Fig 2). He was zealous, impetuous, and able to convince colleagues of the efficacy of his technique.

In 1849, he was appointed Surgeon Dentist to His Royal Highness Prince Albert. Robinson died of septicemia at the early age of forty-eight, following an accidental injury in his garden.

John Snow, who had experimented with ether’s effects on respiration in 1843, continued Robinson’s use of ether anesthesia, which he improved by his design of an inhaler. One year after its introduction in Britain, Snow published in 1847 On the Inhalation of the Vapour of Ether in Surgical Operations…of Nearly Eighty Operations (Fig 3). On 7 April 1853, he administered obstetric anaesthesia to Queen Victoria when she gave birth to Prince Leopold, and again on the birth of Princess Beatrice (14 April 1857). He also advanced the use of chloroform, which was first administered in November 1847 by the Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson.⁵ Snow is better known for eradicating a cholera outbreak in London’s Soho, which he traced to infected drinking water from the Broad Street pump. The John Snow pub is sited nearby.

References

1. Firth PG. Ether Day Revisited: The Surgical Records of Edward Gilbert. Ann Surg Open 2022 May 17;3(2):e166.
2. Bigelow HJ. Insensibility during surgical operations produced by inhalations. Boston Med Surg J 1846;35:309-17.
3. Pearce JMS. The “Ether Controversy.” Hektoen Int Spring 2021. https://hekint.org/2021/06/28/the-ether-controversy/
4. Baillie TW. The first European trial of anaesthetic ether: The Dumfries claim. Brit J Anaesth 1965;37:952.
5. Ramsay, Michael AE. “John Snow, MD: Anaesthetist to the Queen of England and pioneer epidemiologist.” Proceedings Baylor University Medical Center January 6, 2009;19(1): 24-8.