ABSTRACT

It is not essential for you to decide which of the two practices is the better practice, as long as you accept that what the defendants did was in accordance with a practice adopted by responsible persons … finally, bear this in mind, that you are now considering whether it was negligent for certain action to be taken in August 1954, not in February 1957; and in one of the well-known cases on this topic it has been said that you must not look with 1957 spectacles at what happened in 1954 …

Roe v Minister of Health [1954] 2 QB 66

Two men had undergone operations involving the use of spinal anaesthetic and had subsequently become paralysed. The spinal anaesthetic was stored in glass ampoules, which themselves were stored in carbolic acid. At first instance, evidence was led which suggested that the ampoules must have developed tiny cracks, invisible to the eye, and that this had allowed contamination of the anaesthetic by the carbolic acid.