I discovered that it was only a matter of months that chloroform was demonstrated for its properties on humans in 1847 by Scottish obstetrician, Sir James Young Simpson.  The report stated that Simpson was the first to demonstrate chloroform, most likely to an audience of his peers. It was described as “this new and important anaesthetic agent – the peculiar powers of which produced insensibility to pain and used widely from the early 1850s.

However, my research proved that it was first discovered, not in Scotland as reported in medical papers but in Etruria at the Peoples Dispensary for the sick with a 15-year-old girl in 1848. Skill and care were required to differentiate between an effective dose (enough to make patient insensible during surgery). In fact, in December 1846 the Potteries Mercury which pre-dates the official published date of the discovery in 1847.

This three-page document records a significant part that Ether played at the for North Staffs Infirmary at Etruria before which those requiring amputations went through the most agonising surgery with only alcohol as a way of lessening the pain as no anaesthetic had been discovered. Whilst searching the pages of the Staffordshire Advertiser for a totally different subject I came across a most interesting article relating to the first use of ether vapour as an anaesthetic for performing pain free operations as early as 1846 at what was the first North Staffs Infirmary at Etruria before the new one was built in Hartshill in1866.

This story tells how it was a dentist who observed a fellow dentist use nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas,” as aesthetic for a medical demonstration. Unfortunately, the patient awoke while under the aesthetic and he was booed off the stage. After Morton observed this, he consulted a fellow a chemist who suggested using sulfuric ether as anaesthesia for surgery.

For those studying medicine this is a factual story of its very first recorded use at Etruria in Stoke-on-Trent.

The first century Saint Giles’ lived from about 650 to about 710 and was also known as Giles’ the Hermit and is the patron saint of lepers. This fact could in many ways have led to the possibility, that the church in Newcastle, dedicated to St. Giles’, was the founding body that created the hospital of St. Lloy only a mile south of the town situated at Trent Vale on the area of the A34. Sadly, there is no written confirmation of its connection because until 1807, St. Giles’ was little more than distant chapel of ease in the ancient parish of Stoke-upon-Trent and it’s that church of St Peter-ad-Vincula, which is recorded and not St. Giles’. Reecords state that it was the responsibility of the Parish of Stoke-upon-Trent, St Peter ad Vincula,

The location is now occupied by the University Hospital teaching buildings. It is here that once stood a hospital dating from around the middle of the 13th century. Documentary evidence of the hospital of St Lloy has been known for many years, but the exact location remained a mystery until 1985 when excavations to the west of the new hospital wards was being under taken. Here were two skeletons uncovered together with stone foundations and a few sherds of medieval pottery. No serious archaeological work was carried out and the site was covered over to enable a car park to be established. From this time, whatever secrets these finds held were to remain hidden for a further sixteen years.

Little written evidence no longer exists but what there is has been well studied and form the basis of this essay. Great read.

Following the long struggle to overcome the serious stability of the Etruria buildings caused by industry with smoke and subsidence followed by an even longer struggle and different opinions a site at Hartshill was chosen belonging to the Mount estate and was subsequently purchased from Mr. Frederick Bishop, Solicitor of Hanley.
The foundation stone was laid on the 23rd of July 1860 by Sir John Heathcote, MP, the money being raised by a gift from the Prince Regent, out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and a legacy of £1,000 bequeathed by Mr John Rogers of the Watlands. The expenses of the additions were principally defrayed by a fancy bazaar held at Newcastle which realised the sum of £940 and with the additional receipts of an oratorio held in the new parish church of Stoke (opened in 1830) which yielded the sum of a further £800. Mr John Tomlinson of Cliffe Ville, at Hartshill displayed great zeal in establishing a firm start of this new Infirmary.
It was a time before the NHS and government funding, so as an ambitious product the finances depended upon the potteries folk to support this project on the principal it was a public hospital. Factory workers agreed to a few pence stopped from their wages, all churches had a special Infirmary Sunday with special services and the hope of more generous giving – all going to the hospital funs.
It also depended upon numerous benefactors who would pay the cost of the building of additional wards and operating theatres of which all would display the names of the benefactor responsible.
All this went on for nearly 100 years until the NHS took over the responsibility of all hospitals in July 1948. Since this date the hospital went from strength to strength both in its structure but also the medical services it provided. 11 x A4 pages and many photographs and nearly 5,000 words