“I cannot see that anything was left undone that could have been done," said the Coroner, Mr. W. G. L. Mellish, when returning his finding at the inquest on Friday into the death of Henry Stanley McLucas, a returned soldier, 46, who died under an anaesthetic at the Wellington Hospital on July 12. 

Evidence was given that an operation was performed for the removal of a diseased rib, without which there was no possibility of a Wound in McLucas's chest healing. . Dr. P. P. Lynch, pathologist, who conducted a post mortem examination, said that fatty infiltration of the heart muscle would make the administration of anaesthesia more than usually risky, but there was no way of finding that out by clinical examination. He was satisfied that the right course, was adopted in this case and that the proper and usual treatment had been adopted in the endeavour to revive McLucas. There was nothing else that could have been done.

The Coroner said that Dr. Brown, who administered the anaesthetic, was the senior anaesthetist at the hospital, and of the thousands of anaesthetics he had administered this was the first death under an anaesthesia in which he had been concerned. He was satisfied that death was pure misadventure. He returned a verdict that McLucas died of cardiac and respiratory arrest during anaesthesia, brought about by fatty infiltration of the heart.

EVENING POST, VOLUME CXXXVIII, ISSUE 20, 24 JULY 1944, PAGE 6