KEY POINTS:
Professor Cecil Gray revolutionised the practice of anaesthesia in Britain by helping to pioneer advances which have enabled surgeons to use it safely and effectively.
Before World War II operations in the chest or abdomen required the patient to be given extremely deep anaesthesia, usually with ether.
The only way to obtain complete relaxation of the muscles was to cut through them, with consequent large and unsightly scars and often secondary hernias.
But it was impossible to control the breathing properly, which made general anaesthetics particularly hazardous.
The "Liverpool Method", which Gray and his colleagues at the Liverpool School of Medicine developed, has become the foundation of modern, relaxant-based anaesthetic practice through the use of the drug curare.
Most notably this has ensured that newborn babies with serious congenital heart disease are no longer under virtual sentence of death.
Gray's work with Jackson Rees, the pioneer paediatric expert, led on to keyhole surgery and to the more than 1.5 million successful operations performed in Britain each year.
Thomas Cecil Gray studied Medicine at Liverpool University. There was little opportunity for specialisation then and he went straight into general practice.
But general practitioners often had special expertise and he formed a relationship with R.J. Minitt, a distinguished GP anaesthetist.
As a result Gray was persuaded to gain a Diploma in Anaesthetics in 1941. He devoted his life from then on to anaesthesia.
He was turned down for military service on the declaration of war, but after reapplying in 1942, he was posted to a neurosurgical unit in North Africa, where he developed severe pneumonia.
Thanks to the new drug penicillin, then undergoing trials, he recovered with the aid of four-hourly intramuscular injections.
On returning to Liverpool he encountered Rees, also just back from military service.
They tossed a coin to see who would take the post working with adults and who would work with children.
Gray was introduced by a colleague to curare, the use of which had been tried in Montreal, and then delivered an important paper to the Royal Society of Medicine entitled A Milestone in Anaesthesia? in 1946.
Gray was an excellent administrator who recognised the need for anaesthesia to have its own professional organisation.
He was a founding member of the Board of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Dean from 1964 to 1967. He saw the faculty become the College of Anaesthetists and then, in 1992, the Royal College.
He was president of the Association of Anaesthetists and of the anaesthesia section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a strong supporter of the Tri-Services Anaesthetic Society, whose annual guest lecture is named after him.
Liverpool University awarded him a personal chair in 1959, and he became dean of the faculty of medicine in 1970.
Although he had an imposing facade which daunted juniors, Gray was greatly supportive of trainees, who appreciated his love of a shared joke.
Gray married Marjorie Hely in 1937 and the couple had a son and a daughter. After her death he married Pamela Corning, with whom he had a son.
His eldest son has recently retired from his post as a consultant anaesthetist.
