Medical milestones, landmark publications, and notable births and deaths associated with June 7.

Events

1847 – William Russ Pugh (1806-1897) carried out the earliest documented use of diethyl ether for surgical anaesthesia in Australia, administering ether he prepared himself using a homemade device (“Pugh’s inhaler”) modelled on an apparatus he’d seen illustrated in the Illustrated London News; he later published his experience in the Australian Medical Journal.

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Births

1909 – Virginia Apgar (1909-1974), American anesthesiologist; designed the APGAR scoring system for newborns (1953)

1921 – Bernard Lown (1921-2021) American cardiologist, activist and inventor. Original developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter (1961); Nobel Peace Prize (1985); Lown–Ganong–Levine syndrome (1952)

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Deaths

1964 – Rudolf Adriaan Mees (1873-1964), Dutch psychiatrist and physician; described Mees lines (1919)

2013 – Philip Raikes Bromage (1920-2013) was a British anaesthetist; described the Bromage Motor Blockade Score (1965)

2017 – Enno Kleihauer (1927–2017), German paediatrician and haematologist; described Kleihauer–Betke Test (1957)

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Further reading

• Pugh WR. Original cases and communications. Australian Medical Journal 1847; 1(12): 141-142