YOUNG DENTIST’S TRAGIC END.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3865, 1 November 1928, Page 3

YOUNG DENTIST’S TRAGIC END.

MEETS DEATH EXPERIMENTING WITH ANAESTHETIC. Shortly after nine o’clock last evening, Mr. A. H. Boyes, dentist, of Wanganui, returned to his rooms and found his partner, Mr. W. W. Bramwell, dead in the surgery. Mr. Bramwell was seated in one of the operating chairs in front of which was the apparatus for administering anaesthetic, the cylinder being empty. Dr. G. J. Adams, who was immediately summoned, declared life to be extinct. An inquest was opened by Mr. J. S. Barton, S.M., and was adjourned after the taking of formal evidence of identification. The late Mr. Bramwell, who was about 28 years of age and unmarried, had been in practice in Wanganui for six or seven years and was highly skilled in his profession. His parents reside in Feilding, where he received part of bis schooling, later going to Wlellington College and thence to Otago University, where he took the degree B.D.S. He was a most brilliant and enthusiastic student, and at the time of his death, was studying for the degree of doctor of dental surgery, for which he was preparing a thesis on anaesthesia. Mr. Boyes stated to-night his late partner frequently returned to the surgery at night to conduct experiments, and his explanation of the tragedy is that Mr. Bramwell was experimenting on himself for the purpose of studying the effects of anaesthetics and that consciousness left him before he realised tho necessity of cutting-off the supply. The late Mr. Bramwell had taken a prominent part in athletic sports and was captain of the Wanganui Harrier Club and Club captain of the Wanganui Amateur Athletic and Cycling Club.