Hickmann, Henry Hill (1800–1830)

British physician. He began to experiment on suspended animation and rendered animals unconscious, first by partial asphyxiation by the exclusion of air and later by inhalation of carbon dioxide. He then amputated limbs without pain and with good surgical results. He was thus one of the first to demonstrate that the pain of surgical operations could be abolished by the inhalation of a gas. His experiments were designed to produce insensibility by controlled asphyxia, not by anaesthesia as we know it today, but a temporary and reversible suspension of life.

Hickmann was born in Broomfield, near Ludlow, Shropshire, England. He practised medicine initially at Ludlow, having studied at the University of Edinburgh, but soon moved to Shifnal, Shropshire. He explained his work in his ‘Letter on Suspended Animation’ (1824), which was received at the time with apathy. It was reprinted in the Hickman Centenary Volume (1930). The Royal Society of Medicine has endowed a Hickman Medal for the encouragement of research in anaesthesia.