The Robinson-Hooper connection*.

The search for a connection between James Robinson, the dental surgeon who on 19 December 1846 administered the first general anaesthetic in England by the inhalation of the vapour of ether, and William Hooper, the pharmaceutical chemist who produced the best publicised and most widely used of the early commercial ether vaporisers, has revealed hitherto unrecognised aspects of the early history of general anaesthesia.