When ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Faculty of Medicine was established in 1854, anaesthesiology was not yet a scientific discipline. The use of general anaesthesia for operations, for example, was only just then becoming common. Morphine, ether, and chloroform were the main anaesthetics and were generally administered to patients by physicians in general practice rather than by specialists.
There were no academic appointees in the subject at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ until 1916, when Dr. S.J. Keyes was named a lecturer in the subject, subsequently becoming Head of Anaesthesiology at Kingston General Hospital (KGH).
Dr. W.A. Campbell, recruited from the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in 1934, was his successor as Head of Anaesthesia for KGH and ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥, and was the first medical practitioner in the area to use the now common anaesthetic Pentothal.
The Department of Anaesthesiology was established as a separate unit in the Faculty of Medicine in 1960, with Dr. Stuart Vandewater as its first professor and Head.
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