‘On the inhalation of the vapour of Æther, with cases’: The first paper on anaesthesia read before a medical society in Australia

Abstract

On 7 September 1847, in Melbourne in the Port Phillip District of the Colony of New South Wales, David John Thomas (1813–1871) presented a paper, ‘On the inhalation of the vapour of Æther, with cases’, at an ordinary monthly meeting of the Port Phillip Medical Association. This is the earliest known presentation of a paper on etherisation in Australia. The partial publication of the manuscript in October 1847 in the Australian Medical Journal may have led to it being returned to Thomas in Melbourne. The handwritten manuscript is now preserved in the Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria. A transcript of the complete manuscript is now recorded with relevant historical notes.