Henry Edmund Gaskin Boyle OBE (2 April 1875 – 15 October 1941) was a pioneering anaesthetist best remembered for the development of early anaesthetic machines.
Born in Barbados, he was the only child of Henry Eudolphus Boyle, estate manager and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin Law Gaskin, a member of the House of Assembly.
[2] During World War I he worked with the Royal Army Medical Corps in London, publishing over 3600 cases anaesthetised with nitrous oxide-oxygen-ether.
His other contributions to anaesthesia include the Boyle-Davis gag (still used today during tonsillectomy operations) and a popular textbook, Practical Anaesthetics (1907[4] and two subsequent editions).
[5] He was president of the Section of Anaesthetics of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1923, a founding member of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland and an early examiner for the Diploma in Anaesthesia.