ABSTRACT
The first attempt to produce muscle relaxation by giving curare to patients undergoing anaesthesia was made by Arthur Läwen, a Leipzig surgeon. The second person to use curare in anaesthesia was FP De Caux, an adventurous London anaesthetist, who administered a crude preparation in 1928 but failed to publish his observations. He believed that curare had a potential use in anaesthesia, and worked hard to interest other anaesthetists in its use. Then, in 1944, Ralph Waters of Madison, Wisconsin reported that it was not necessary to give a potent general anaesthetic and that curare worked perfectly well when combined with light nitrous oxide anaesthesia. Although Macintosh in Oxford and Forrester in Glasgow were the first to report on the use of curare in anaesthesia in the UK, it was Cecil Gray and John Halton of Liverpool who popularized the use of the drug by reintroducing the term 'balanced anaesthesia'.
