Joseph Rice: The Earliest Known Australian to Have Received Ether for a Surgical Procedure

Abstract

Joseph Rice: the earliest known Australian to have received ether for a surgical procedure John Snow's book, On the inhalation of the vapour of ether in surgical operations 1 , contains a list of surgical cases at St George's Hospital and the University College Hospital, London, for which he had administered ether 1. Snow's first case at the University College Hospital is interesting because the patient, Joseph Rice (age 28), was described as an Australian who had travelled to London to undergo surgery (Figure 1). The surgeon was Robert Liston (1794-1847) and the operation, a lithotomy, was performed on 3 May 1847. The patient was discharged on 6 June. Further details of Joseph Rice could not be determined with any certainty. An internet search for persons named Joseph Rice yielded two convicts who were transported to Australia, the first in 1826 2 and the second in 1830 3. The internet database contained information about their convictions and transportation to Australia, but their ages were not recorded. There were also other residents of Australia (e.g. free settlers) called Joseph Rice. One person who would have been around 28 years old in 1847 was Joseph Rice (1818-1877), a ship's steward and later owner of the Black Bull Hotel in Geelong. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and his parents were Thomas Rice and Mary Boigue. However it is not known if he had travelled to London in 1846 or 1847. A search of passenger lists revealed Mr J. Rice as a passenger on the ship Ganges, which left Sydney on 6 October 1846 for London 4. This person may have been Liston's patient on 3 May 1847. The typical duration of a journey by ship from Australia to London in the 1840s was four months. If Liston's patient, Joseph Rice, had left Sydney on the Ganges