Death or Surgery: The Quest for a Painless, Waking Sleep On October 16th, 1846, William Thomas Green Morton, a dentist, completed the first successful public demonstration of inhaled ether, relieving surgical pain at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It is because of this first successful public demonstration of the use of an anaesthetic that each year on October 16th we celebrate the history and discovery of anaesthesia for use in surgeries. If one can imagine that before these pioneering doctors, surgeons and dentists, any kind of medical procedure and the inevitable pain that came with it meant copious amounts of alcohol, herbal mixtures containing opium alkaloids, hypnotism or pieces of leather/wood to bite down on. This was the backdrop to which Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829); Henry Hill Hickman (1800-1830); William Clarke (1819-1898); Crawford Williamson Long (1815-1878); Horace Wells (1815-1848); William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868); John MacDonnell (1796...
In celebration of World Pharmacists Day, RCSI Heritage Collections are highlighting materials in the Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson (HCR) Pharmaceutical Chemists collection and marking events which have occurred to celebrate the release of the collection to the public. The collection was donated to RCSI Heritage Collections in October 2023, by Michael and Christopher Shiell, both great-grandsons of one of the company’s founders, Henry Conyngham. The Shiell brothers worked as joint-managing directors of the company until the pharmacies were sold to Boots in 1998. The following blog post will outline brief historical context of the company and its founders and will then explore some collection highlights and end with how researchers can access the collection. Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson Pharmaceutical Chemists: Hayes, Conyngham & Robinson Pharmaceutical Chemists was founded in 1897 by William Hayes (1843-1918), Henry Conyngham (1845-1931) and Sir Thomas W. Robin...