Anaesthesia was introduced into surgery in 1846 and for the first 100 years little progress was made. It remained essentially a craft learned by experience rather than a science. Full-time anaesthetists were rare, anaesthetics being administered by general practitioners or any hospital doctors. The

William Derek Wylie was one of the leading anaesthetists of his generation. Born in Huddersfield in 1918, he was educated at Uppingham, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and St Thomas's Hospital, where he qualified in 1943. Initially he intended to become a physician and held junior appointment

Norman Winstone was a consultant surgeon at Selly Oak, Birmingham. He was born in Gidea Park, Essex, on 8 February 1924, the son of Herbert Charles Winstone, a property manager, and Kate née Robinson, a policeman's daughter. He was educated at Gidea Park College and Romford Royal Liberty School, bef