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 (1796-1892); Dr. John Snow (1813-1858); and Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870), to name but a few, began endeavours to render surgical procedures safe and painless.
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| M0010200: Portrait of William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868). In copyright. Source: Wellcome Collection. |
Anaesthesia in Ireland: John MacDonnell ~ ‘Amputation of the Arm, Performed at the Richmond Hospital, without Pain’
The news of the successful use of inhaled ether began to circulate in medical circles and The British and Foreign Medical Review contained an editorial regarding these developments which was read by Mr. Edward Hutton, a surgeon at the Richmond Surgical Hospital in Dublin, who in turn showed the piece to one of his colleagues, Dr. John MacDonnell. After trying to inhale the ether himself before attempting to try it on his patients, MacDonnell operated on an 18-year-old patient named Mary Kane, who had developed suppurative arthritis of the elbow after getting a thorn stuck in the joint while collecting firewood. The thorn had possibly punctured the arm near the elbow and entered the joint, which became inflamed and was treated locally by an application of turpentine, bluestone and some green ointment (which likely made the injury worse). Kane was referred to the Richmond Hospital but after suffering from continuing worsening symptoms MacDonnell made the decision to amputate, and ether was administered. MacDonnell completed the surgery and wrote up a case report for The Dublin Medical Press lauding the importance of the discovery of ether and in an addendum noting that his patient had made a good recovery.
For the remainder of this blog post, I will be focusing on the establishment of the RCSI Faculty of Anaesthetists and the individual papers of Dr. T.J. Gilmartin which were donated by his son John Gilmartin in 2019 and were recently appraised and catalogued and will shortly be made available to researchers.
For the remainder of this blog post, I will be focusing on the establishment of the RCSI Faculty of Anaesthetists and the individual papers of Dr. T.J. Gilmartin which were donated by his son John Gilmartin in 2019 and were recently appraised and catalogued and will shortly be made available to researchers.
RCSI/IP/Dickson/03/04/01
‘Quies dono divum aegris gratissima | Sleep the most gracious gift of the Gods’ ~ The RCSI Faculty of Anaesthetists
The Faculty of Anaesthetists, RCSI was formally inaugurated by the then president of RCSI Mr. Thomas George Wilson at a meeting held in the college on July 8th, 1960, however the first meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Anaesthetists, RCSI was held on December 15th, 1959. Dr. T.J. Gilmartin was appointed the first dean of the faculty with Dr. Victor Ormsby McCormick as Vice Dean; Dr. Desmond J. Riordan as College Representative; Dr. Geoffrey Raymond Davys; Dr. Patrick Joseph Drury Byrne; Dr. John Wharry Dundee; Dr. Ethel Sheila Kenny; Dr. Samuel Harold Swann Love; Dr. Paul Finbarre Murray; Dr. Patrick Joseph Nagle; and Dr. Joseph Augustine Woodcock were also appointed to the first Board. The faculty held scientific meetings with leading professionals in the field of anaesthetics presenting lectures on various topics in anaesthetics, it awarded fellowships (honorary, ad eundem and by examination) and ensured the appointment of the first academic lecturer in anaesthetics in the Republic of Ireland at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr. T.J. Gilmartin (1964). On May 16th, 1998, the RCSI Faculty of Anaesthetists amended their Articles of Association, and the College of Anaesthetists of Ireland came into being (renamed the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland in 2018).
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/02/11
Dr. T.J. Gilmartin, F.R.C.S. I. (Hon), F.F.A.R.C.S., F.F.A.R.C.S.I.
Thomas James Gilmartin was born in Ballymote, County Sligo in 1905. Gilmartin was the son of James Gilmartin and his wife Rita Coghlan, the latter died of puerperal fever shortly after Gilmartin was born. Gilmartin was educated first by the Sisters of Saint Louis at Kiltimagh, County Mayo, then at Summerhill College, County Sligo and subsequently at Belvedere College in Dublin before attending medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, graduating LRCP & SI in 1929. Gilmartin trained in anaesthetics in the Birkenhead General Hospital, the Royal Southern Hospital in Liverpool and St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London. He returned to Dublin in 1931 and was appointed assistant anaesthetist to Mercers’ Hospital under the supervision of Dr. P. Gaffney before he returned to London working for a further year but this time at the Hammersmith Hospital, gaining experience with Boyle’s apparatus. Gilmartin obtained his Diploma in Anaesthetics in 1937 and moving forward to 1946 he became visiting anaesthetist to Mercers’ Hospital, the Dublin Skin and Cancer Hospital (Hume Street), the Dublin Dental Hospital and Peamount Sanatorium.
Gilmartin was involved in the development of the Irish Diploma in Anaesthetics, DA (a conjoint examination of both the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) and Gilmartin himself received the Irish DA in 1943. He also applied to the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland to form a Section of Anaesthetics which was agreed to with certain stipulations. In 1959, Gilmartin was one of the founding members and first dean of the new Faculty of Anaesthetists, RCSI, and became a foundation fellow a year later in 1960. In 1964, the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland appointed Gilmartin as lecturer in anaesthetics for a period of five years, and in 1965 he was made an associate professor of anaesthetics in the College. Gilmartin received an honorary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1974 (the only anaesthetist in Ireland to have been awarded the honorary fellowship to this day). He was very involved with various associations and societies such as the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, the Association of Dental Anaesthetics, the Graduates’ Association of RCSI and the Biological Society of RCSI and RCPI. Gilmartin retired from anaesthetics and Mercers’ Hospital when it closed in 1983 and three years later after a period of illness, on June 22nd, 1986, T.J. Gilmartin died.
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/06/09 RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/07/02/02 Familial Loss: Dr. John (Jack) Gilmartin
In contrast to the records relating to Dr. T.J. Gilmartin’s career as an anaesthetist and the RCSI Faculty of Anaesthetists, the collection also has several personal family records, and I discovered as I appraised and catalogued the collection that T.J. Gilmartin was not the only member of his family who became a medical professional, his brother Jack Gilmartin also studied in RCSI and completed training in Mercers’ Hospital. There is a subsection within the collection which contains correspondence between T.J. and Jack as well as some ephemera and it’s evident that both T.J. and Jack were very close. The correspondence consists mainly of updates between the two brothers on their social lives, schooling and news from their family in Ballymote. However, as I continued to appraise the collection, I found an envelope which was annotated and read “Last Letter from Dr Jack Gilmartin to his [half-brother] Dr T.J. Gilmartin from his new appointment in Liverpool, he died tragically shortly after [...] telegraph in 1934”. The letter being referred to was dictated by a fellow doctor working in the same hospital as Jack Gilmartin after he became ill with pneumonia. Within only a few days Jack had succumbed to the disease and T.J. arrived in Liverpool to arrange for the remains to be removed to Ireland.
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/07/01/21 RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/07/01/22
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/06/07 RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/06/07
Meet me in St. Lazare: Simone
The collection also boasts a series of letters from a ‘girlfriend’ of T.J. Gilmartin’s, Simone Brière. Simone, according to a note written on the back of a photograph of her, was an au-pair in Dublin where it is assumed she met T.J. They continued corresponding after she went back to France, and the letters mostly concern updates on mutual friends and acquaintances, requests for more frequent correspondence and hopes of meeting again in either Ireland or France. There is very clear affection in the tone of the letters; “Oh! [Dearest], write to me as soon as you can and tell me what’s the matter” and when reading the letters I personally felt a keen sense of both T.J. and Simone’s youth when they first started corresponding and gradually the sense of maturity that developed in them both as they eventually appeared to have gone their separate ways.
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/06/08
The Archive of a Faculty & its Dean
This collection was exciting and fascinating to work with, particularly because of the variety and depth of the personal papers. While the administrative and professional career of Professor Gilmartin was very impressive, his contribution to the field of anaesthetics unquestionable, the personal papers and the photographic collection explore the life that T.J. Gilmartin lived outside of his work as an anaesthetist. I felt as I catalogued the collection that I was being made privy to the life Gilmartin lived and became familiar with Dr. Gilmartin in death in a way that many people may not have been privy to during his life. As archivists we have the great privilege to work with all kinds of forms of records, we are given the opportunity to provide a lens into the lives of those who lived before us and better understand our past through those who shaped it. I came away from this collection with new knowledge of the field of anaesthetics, a new understanding of how this medical discipline was shaped in an Irish context and a new acquaintance who I never had the pleasure of meeting but who spoke to me through the records of his life he left behind.
RCSI/IP/Gilmartin/7/3/7
References:
MacDonnell J. (letter), ‘Amputation of the Arm, Performed at the Richmond Hospital, without Pain’ (1847), Dublin Medical Press, 17, pp. 8-9.Tracey, Joseph. (2025, August 28). Thomas James Gilmartin (1905-1986). The College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland. https://www.anaesthesia.ie/college/history/thomas-james-gilmartin/
Warde, Declan, Joseph Tracey & John Cahill (2022). Safety as we Watch: Anaesthesia in Ireland 1847-1998. Eastwood Books.