Dr Michael Easther
In the 1980s, GP Michael Easther employed an unusual practice in the operating theatre at Braemar Hospital, as this account reveals…
In June, 1986, a patient was wheeled into theatre at Braemar Hospital. It was a routine operation. The patient – a young man named Bruce – was to have a screw removed from a previously fractured right scaphoid (a bone in the wrist).
For orthopaedic surgeon Ian Brown, it was no different to many other similar procedures – except for one thing: the patient was not anaesthetised; he was hynoptised.
The patient’s GP, Michael Easther, had for years incorporated hypnosis in his general practice to try to reduce the number of prescriptions written for conditions such as stress, sleeplessness, depression, and a range of addictions. Bruce had been successfully treated for drug addiction.
“When it became clear he (Bruce) had to have an operation on his wrist I was reluctant to expose him to any drugs including the premedication and anaesthetic drugs,” says Dr Easther, “so I asked if I could hypnotise him instead. “
Ian Brown agreed and former Braemar anaesthetist, the late Hugh Clarkson, offered to stand by in case he was needed. The patient was hypnotised in his room and wheeled into theatre with Michael Easther by his side. A tourniquet was applied and the screw cut out. The operation, which took around 20 minutes, was successful.
“Interestingly, when a tourniquet is removed, normally there is a rush of blood, but in this case, there was no such flooding as hypnosis tends to slow the arterial flow. The patient had no memory of the operation,” says Dr Easther, who is now retired.
A few months later, a further two-hour operation was carried out on the same patient– again under hypnosis – when the joint was arthrodesed (surgically fused to give pain relief). For this procedure bone had to be chiseled out of the pelvis to be inserted in the wrist. Dr Easther was amused when Ian Brown said the noise of the chisel might be troublesome. “I thought the pain would be more problematical.”
Again, Bruce – who Dr Easther describes as an excellent subject – remembered nothing when he was brought out of his hypnotic state.
Michael Easther says to his knowledge hypnosis has not been used anywhere else in New Zealand to take someone down to the depth needed to carry out such a demanding operation. “Anaesthetist Hugh Clarkson commented afterwards, ‘if things go on like this we’ll all be out of work’.”
He has not repeated the procedure for surgery. However, during the 35 years he was in general practice at Fairfield Medical Centre, and in retirement, he estimates he has treated between 5000 and 6000 patients with hypnosis.
He says hypnosis is particularly helpful for bedwetting, stammering, sleeplessness, anxiety, depression and even sexual problems. “The one thing about hypnosis is that even if you can’t make it better, you can’t make it any worse and you can’t say that for any medication.”
He says it is a myth that people need to go to sleep to be hypnotised. “Only one in 15 people goes down into sleep. People don’t need to go to sleep to get the benefit from hypnosis. I get them to a state of relaxation where their conscious mind gets the message but their subconscious mind gets the message as well. The subconscious mind is a very powerful director of how you think.”
Dr Easther trained at St Mary’s Hospital in London and graduated in 1954, in the same year as Sir Roger Bannister, the first person to break the four-minute mile and later a distinguished neurologist. Lord Arthur Porritt, a former governor- general of New Zealand and a top surgeon was a surgical tutor at the time.
He came to New Zealand in 1957 and stayed on. Today, he lives at Vision Forest Lake retirement village and is actively involved in theatre, which has been a lifelong love. This year he is playing the wizard in the Wizard of Oz, which he describes as a wonderful role. He also compiles a weekly cryptic crossword for the Waikato Times and writes the weekly Flim Flam whimsical comment for the same publication.
