§ MR. BRAMSDON (Portsmouth)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home 1953 Department whether his attention has been called to the recent deaths of three persons under anæsthetics in London hospitals, and which were the subject of coroners' inquiries on Saturday last the 25th instant, viz., Henry Walter Furlonger, aged fifty-two, an employee of the City of London Brewery, who died in the Central London Throat and Ear Hospital; Lydia Thompson, aged forty-five, who was given an anæsthetic at the Royal Free Hospital for an operation to remove a needle which had penetrated her hand, and in neither of which cases had the operation actually commenced; and Harold Cecil Buttram, aged sixteen, who died at the London Hospital in the middle of the removal of some dead bone from his jaw; and whether, having regard to the continued cases of deaths under anæsthetics, he can now see his way clear to recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) I have seen newspaper reports of two of the cases referred to. I am in communication with the Lord President of the Council, and through him with the General Medical Council, on the question whether a course of instruction in the administration of anæthetics can be included in all cases in the course of study required for a medical qualification; and I think that the question of holding a formal inquiry by Royal Commission or Committee may with advantage be postponed, at any rate until I know what action the medical authorities are prepared to take in this matter.