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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/11055/902
Title: A bibliography of anaesthesia-related articles in the New Zealand Medical Journal, 1905-2006
Authors: Hutchinson BR
Keywords: medical writing
publications
Anaesthesia
Pain Management
New Zealand
Issue Date: 2003
Abstract: During my term as editor of the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists Newsletter (1968-1970) I began a series titled “Historical”. This surveyed articles relating to anaesthesia which had appeared in the New Zealand Medical Journal from its earliest years. Some of these articles were reprinted in Newsletter with biographical notes on the authors. The series was continued until 1980, covering the New Zealand Medical Journal from 1887 to 1980. Recently Professor Barry Baker of Sydney suggested that I should rewrite this work as a full bibliography. I have reviewed all the journals again and brought the survey up to the end of the year 2000. The first New Zealand Medical Journal was published in 1887 (vol. 1 covered 1887, pages 1 - 155, and part of 1888, pages 159 - 290) with the first mention of anaesthesia being in a paper by John M L Davies, MRCS Eng & LRCP Ed, Honorary Surgeon to the Dunedin Hospital: “Case of Tuberculous Kidney: Nephrectomy”, vol. 1, pp. 11- 14: “August 20th. Patient anaesthetised (fluid was aspirated). “August 26th. The patient being thoroughly anaesthetised was turned on to his left side....” A successful right nephrectomy was performed and it was noted that carbolic sprays were used as antisepsis, but there was no detail of the anaesthetic. To find any detail of an anaesthetic administration we must turn a few pages to the paper by H W Maunsell, MD, also Honorary Surgeon to Dunedin Hospital, “Case of Supra-vaginal Amputation of the Uterus and Ovaries for Concentric Interstitial Uterine Fibromyomata”, vol. 1, pp. 17-22. He stated: “The anaesthetic chosen was a mixture of chloroform and ether (3 to 1); no vomiting occurred and the pulse remained good throughout the operation.” There was little blood loss in the 1h 20m operation and the patient made a good recovery. However, the anaesthetist is not mentioned, and that was common at the time. The first anaesthetic death recorded was in 1888 (1[OS], 286). In Invercargill, chloroform was administered to a 17 year old youth by Dr Hanan. The heart and respiration both stopped soon after induction so the draining of empyema by Dr Macleod did not take place. Artificial respiration and the subcutaneous injection of ether did not resuscitate the patient, unfortunately. The first paper on an anaesthetic topic did not appear until Dr Isaiah de Zouche’s classic work in 1889, “On Ether as an Anaesthetic” (3[OS], 3 - 19). Isaiah de Zouche, MD (QUI) was at that time Lecturer on Diseases of Children in the University of Otago, in Dunedin. There had been earlier papers on anaesthesia from this country, but not in the New Zealand Medical Journal. Pride of place goes to John Wilkins whose monograph “Some Remarks on a New Ether Rebreathing Apparatus, also on Ether, its Practical Uses, Modes of Administration, and Advantages over Chloroform” was published in Dunedin in 1879. Before the coming of the New Zealand Medical Journal, some papers from this country were published in Australia and a notable one was “On Some of the Uses of Cocaine in Minor Surgery” by Dr Thomas Bain Whitton in 1888 in the Australasian Medical Gazette (April, 155-157). Most papers relating to anaesthesia by New Zealand authors appeared in the New Zealand Medical Journal once it was established but later there were publications in the British Journal of Anaesthesia, Anaesthesia, and a few in the American periodicals Anesthesiology and Current Researches in Anesthesia and Analgesia. However, once the Australian journal Anaesthesia and Intensive Care was produced in August 1972, many local authors submitted their papers there so there was a reduction of such papers in the New Zealand Medical Journal. Similarly the evolution of the NZSA’s Newsletter into Anaesthesia Aotearoa in the last few years has attracted articles on anaesthesia which might otherwise have been submitted to the New Zealand Medical Journal. In this survey I have endeavoured to include all papers, letters to the editor, and reports, relevant to anaesthesia which have appeared in the New Zealand Medical Journal. Besides covering pure anaesthesia, this work includes references for intensive care, pain relief and some basic research. While the majority of authors are anaesthetists, many branches of the profession are represented -- general practitioners, surgeons, physicians, obstetricians and gynaecologists, dentists, pathologists, physiologists, psychiatrists, registrars, house surgeons, and more recently intensivists, pain specialists and others. No attempt has been made to distinguish between authors in this way, nor where they worked at the time of publication.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11055/902
Appears in Collections:Scholarly and Clinical

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