Wakley (1795–1862)

On the 19th March 1847, *The Times* reported the death of Ann Parkinson two days after ether administration [29]. Chloroform's first UK victim was Hannah Greener, who died during induction on 28th January 1848. To assuage growing public concern with the safety of anaesthetics, large-scale animal studies were conducted [30]. In 1848, Wakley reported a study comparing the e ffects of ether and chloroform on 100 animals—predominantly dogs, but also cats, rabbits, rats, mice, guinea pigs, a hedgehog, a pig, two sheep, a donkey, two mares and some pigeons. From the findings that death resulted in 11 out of 32 animals (34%) anaesthetized with ether and 30 out of 67 animals (44%) receiving chloroform, Wakley concluded:

### *"*... *assuredly the more dangerous one of the two would be found in the vapour of chloroform".* [31]

However, Youngson (1979) emphasized the studies' hopelessly unscientific character [22], e.g., of the 18 dogs studied, only one received ether (and of the 17 dogs given chloroform, only 4 died (24%)). Whilst Wakley's conclusions were based on unsound data, they were nevertheless to prove correct.
