author
Henry Hill Hickman
1800–1830
Driven by a desire to make surgery less painful, this early 19th-century English doctor explored ideas that later became part of the story of anesthesia. His life was brief, but his experiments made him a memorable figure in medical history.
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About the author
Henry Hill Hickman was an English physician and early promoter of anesthesia, born on January 27, 1800, near Bromfield in Shropshire. He studied medicine in Edinburgh and London, qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1820, and began practice while still very young.
He is best remembered for trying to find ways to prevent pain during operations. In the 1820s he carried out experiments on animals using what he called "suspended animation," hoping surgery might one day be performed without suffering. His methods were not accepted in his lifetime, but later writers have often seen him as an important forerunner in the history of anesthesia.
Hickman died on April 2, 1830, at just 30 years old. Although he did not live to see his ideas recognized, his name has remained linked with the long search for safer and more humane surgery.