The Contribution of Newspapers and Their Advertisements to the History of Colonial Anaesthesia

Abstract

The first news to reach New Zealand about the beneficial effects of inhalation of ether during surgical operations arrived in Wellington on Sunday July 4 1847. This was 283 days after the first successful demonstration in Boston. The mail services that brought this news and the original source of this news are described. After this news had reached Wellington, it then took another 84 days before the first successful trial of the agent took place in the recently opened Wellington Colonial Hospital. This period of eighty-four days com-pares unfavourably with those for Sydney and Cape Town. The reasons for this delay are discussed and using information available in the local Sydney and Wellington newspapers, the delay is shown to have been due to the unavailability of supplies of the necessary chemical reagents.