Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Dec 2022
Inspiration from inhalation: Poetry about anaesthesia in Australian newspapers in 1847-1848.
An anonymous poem and a cartoon about etherisation were published in Bell's Life in Sydney on 26 June 1847, less than 3 weeks after ether was first administered in Sydney, New South Wales. Almost a year later, an Adelaide newspaper, The South Australian Register, reproduced a poem about chloroform from the British satirical magazine Punch. This poem, 'The Blessings of Chloroform', has been attributed to Percival Leigh, a British medical practitioner who became a comic writer.