John Gillies

John Gillies, (6 February 1895 18 July 1976) was a Scottish anaesthetist, who worked at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE). For gallantry as a serving soldier in WWI he was awarded the Military Cross. He founded the department of anaesthetics in the RIE and became its first director. The Gillies anaesthetic machine which he devised was the first British closed circuit anaesthetic device and was in use until the 1960s. He was educated at Broughton High School, Edinburgh, going on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School from 1913. At the outbreak of WWI he volunteered for army service and served in the British Expeditionary Force. He was commissioned in the Highland Light Infantry, was awarded the Military Cross and spent the last seven months of the war as a prisoner of war in Germany. He returned to Edinburgh and completed his medical studies, graduating MB ChB in 1923.

Career

Gillies was a house physician in Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle before entering general practice in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Much of his work involved giving anaesthetics for operations performed by one of his partners. To gain experience in this field he went to London in 1931 to study anaesthetic technique under Dr John Hunter and Dr (later Sir) Ivan Magill, a pioneer of endotracheal tube anaesthesia. The following year he returned to Edinburgh to work as an anaesthetist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. He was then appointed as anaesthetist to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE). Here he worked in the professorial surgical unit, initially with Sir John Fraser and subsequently with Sir James Learmonth and latterly with Sir John Bruce. In 1940 Gillies set up the Department of Anaesthetics in the RIE, the first such in Scotland with two junior anaesthetists whose training he supervised. When the National Health Service was established in 1948 he was appointed Director of Anaesthesia. He determined to make anaesthetics an academic discipline in Edinburgh and recommended that anaesthetists in the RIE should have university status. He was appointed lecturer in anaesthetics by the university. and was later promoted to J Y Simpson Reader in anaesthesia. The first commercial model was made by Charles King Ltd of London from 1941. A second improved version was available from 1948 and from 1951 the Mark III version was produced by the Coxeter–King division of the British Oxygen Company. The machine continued in use in Britain until the 1960s.

in March 1949, Gillies anaesthetised King George VI for the operation of lumbar sympathectomy, performed in Buckingham Palace by his colleague Sir James Learmonth.

Selected publications

Gillies, J. (1941) Anaesthesia in the shocked patient. The Lancet, 237, 6129, 226–227.

Gillies, J. (1942). Modern anæsthesia. Edinburgh Post-Graduate Lectures in Medicine, 2, 1940–41.

Gillies, J. (1943). The Time Factor in Surgical Operations. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 36, 9, 457–462.

Gillies, J. (1949). Anæsthesia for the Surgical Treatment of Hypertension. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 42, 5, 295–298.

Gillies, J. (1952). Physiological Trespass in Anæsthesia: President's Address. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 45, 1, 1–6.

Minnitt, R. J., Gillies, J. (1948). Textbook of Anaesthetics ... With a section on regional analgesia by L.B. Wevill, etc. Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone.