Book Review of "Safety as we watch: anaesthesia in Ireland 1847–1998, by Declan Warde, Joseph Tracey, John Cahill"

Excerpt

2022 is the 175th Anniversary of the first use of Anaesthesia in Ireland. How apt, therefore, that a book has been released chronicling that early period of anaesthesia introduction up to the modern era in Ireland. The book, titled Safety as we Watch is published by Eastwood Books of Dublin, 2022. The title is the translation of the motto of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland, “Salus dum Vigilamus”, and it is the college who commissioned this work. The authors are all retired consultants who have a passion for both the history and development of the specialty in Ireland. The first anaesthetic in Ireland was administered on January 1, 1847 at The Richmond Hospital Dublin, at which Surgeon John McDonnell amputated an arm from Mary Kane of Drogheda. This was only a few weeks after the first demonstration of the anaesthetic effects of ether in Boston in October, 1846, by William Morton. …