The first anaesthetic in Central Africa
by
Conacher ID.
Anaesthesia. 1985 Nov;40(11):1103-7

ABSTRACT

The Reverend Doctor Robert Laws (1851-1934) followed in the footsteps of David Livingstone to Central Africa. At the beginning of a long and distinguished career as a medical missionary in Christian service to the country that has since become the Republic of Malawi, he was a prime mover in the setting up of a mission station at Cape Maclear, on the shores of Lake Malawi (formerly known as Lake Nyasa and closely associated with the discoveries of Doctor Livingstone). There, on 2 March 1876, Laws used chloroform to produce surgical anaesthesia when he operated on a young African male who had a cystic tumour above his left eye.

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