Richard Ellis (1937-1995)

Richard Hancock Ellis was born on 11 September 1937. He graduated from London Hospital Medical School in 1961 and his appointments included exchange at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. In 1971 he was appointed consultant anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He was a member of the councils of both the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland and the anaesthetic section of the Royal Society of Medicine and also an examiner for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

Ellis' research interests centred on historical themes. He researched and published on the introduction of anaesthesia into Great Britain in the 1840s and particularly on John Snow (1813-1858),a physician and developer in the use of anaesthesia. His research located the sites of the first ether anaesthetic, and of John Snow's residence, and he organised the erection of blue plaques to mark them both.

Ellis also made more widely available some early and rare publications on anaesthesia. These included a facsimile edition of On narcotism by the inhalation of vapours, John Snow's essays describing his researches into the scientific basis of anaesthesia, as well as Ellis' transcription of John Snow's Case Books. Both of which included introductory essays by Ellis. He also edited material for a third volume of essays on the first hundred years of anaesthesia left at his death by Dr. William Stanley Sykes.

Ellis was to have presented a paper to the Royal Society of Medicine on 16 June 1995, to mark the 70th anniversary of the first trans-auricular mitral valvotomy by the surgeon Henry Souttar. Sadly, Ellis died unexpectedly on 10 May 1995, leaving the lecture to be read posthumously.

Audio recording of Royal Society of Medicine Section of Anaesthetics conference on Anaesthesia in the European Economic Community, 1976, transferred to Royal Society of Medicine archives April 2012.

Audio recordings of the 4th World Congress of Anaesthesiologists, held in London in 1968, transferred to the archives of the Association of Anaesthetists, July 2012.