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. With his colleague HWC ('Griff') Griffiths he pioneered the technique of high spinal anaesthesia to produce hypotension and 'bloodless' operating fields. Gillies anaesthetised King George VI in Buckingham Palace and was made Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) for this service. He was president of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland from 1947 to 1950. Early life John Gillies was born in Edinburgh the son of Archibald George Gillies and his wife Jessie Jane Gillies. 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.