Wilkinson , David John , fl 1972-2000 , anaesthetist

MB, BS, London, 1972; Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1971; Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1976; Consultant Anaesthetist, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London; Honorary Treasurer of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland; formerly curator of the A Charles King Collection of Historical Anaesthetic Apparatus at the Association of Anaesthetists. Publications: 'A Charles King: a unique contribution to anaesthesia', Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, lxxx (Aug 1987), pp 510-14; edited, with A Marshall Barr and Thomas B Boulton, Essays on the history of anaesthesia (Royal Society of Medicine Press, 1996).

A Charles King (1888-1965) was an engineer and instrument maker who specialised in anaesthetic apparatus from the early 1920s, a period of technical development in the specialty. Following a series of financial problems King's company was taken over by Coxeter's, which subsequently became part of the British Oxygen Company (BOC). King worked with leading anaesthetists in developing instruments and amassed a collection of equipment, which he donated to the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland in 1953 and which has subsequently been augmented by further acquisitions. The artefacts date from 1774 to the 1990s. The collection was moved from King's premises in Devonshire Street to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1965 and to the new premises of the Association of Anaesthetists at no 9 Bedford Square in 1987. For further information see editorial on King in the British Journal of Anaesthesia, xxv, no 2 (Apr 1953); 'The A Charles King Collection of early anaesthetic apparatus', Anaesthesia, vol xxv, no 4 (Oct 1970).