This book is a further fruit of a project generously supported by a Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine, undertaken at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester. Many institutions have provided invaluable help over the years and I particularly thank staff of the Wellcome Institute for the History
of Medicine, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the British Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, St George’s Hospital, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, King’s College Hospital, the
London Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital, the London Metropolitan Archives, Westminster Medical Society, Edinburgh Public Record Offi ce, Glaxo Wellcome, the History of Anaesthesia Society, the John Rylands University Library, and the Liverpool Medical Institute. Sources that I particularly drew on in the preparation of this book are mentioned in Further Reading but I am in debt to many more historians of medicine and other scholars whose work and ideas have sustained my own.
I am particularly grateful to Lucy Bending for discussions on ideas of pain in the nineteenth century; Peter Drury for advice on aspects of twentieth-century anaesthesia; Charles Suckling for sharing his memories of the discovery of halothane; and David Watts for giving permission to reprint his poem ‘Starting the IV: Anesthesia’. My thanks to those who have read parts, or all of this book, and whose thoughts and helpful criticisms have improved its clarity and accuracy: Emm Barnes, Peter Drury, John Pickstone, Charles Suckling, and Meriel Underwood. Special thanks go to Emm Barnes for timely and sustaining support.
I am grateful to my editors at Oxford University Press: Marsha Filion, whose enthusiasm for the project started the ball rolling; and Latha Menon and James Th ompson, whose well-judged nudges kept it going. Finally, but most importantly, I thank my family, especially Evie, Verity, and Gwyn, who have tolerated the writing process with cheerful forbearance.
Stephanie J. Snow
Erway Hall
December 2007
