Mark Lidwill was born in Cheltenham, England and died ninety years later in Nowra on the South Coast of New South Wales. His father was a captain in the British Army and, as an only son, he commenced his education at Westminster School in London. The family came to Australia when Mark was eighteen and he completed his school studies at Melbourne Grammar School before entering the faculty of medicine of the University of Melbourne. Graduating with honours in 1902, he must have been a bright student to gain his MD less than three years later. In 1906 he married a daughter of Sir Phillip Sydney Jones and they had two daughters. Mrs Lidwill died in 1956 and some time later Mark remarried.

He held various appointments in Victorian hospitals before settling in Beecroft, then a semi-rural outer suburb of Sydney, and later transferring to Strathfield where he continued in general practice until 1913. In that year he became a specialist physician and was appointed as an honorary assistant physician to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. So commenced an association which was to last over fifty-five years. In 1913, also, he had the distinction of being appointed as the first lecturer in anaesthetics in the University of Sydney and the first tutor in anaesthetics at his hospital.

In 1928, following the opening of the eight Anderson Stuart operating theatres and the increase in activity in surgical procedures, it was not surprising that the medical board looked towards attaining up-to-date methods of administering anaesthetics. Following prolonged discussion and not a little disagreement, the board of directors resolved to create a department of anaesthetics and in a most far-sighted move also resolved that the lecturer in anaesthetics be appointed honorary director of this department. Thus Mark Lidwill, aged fifty-two and whilst still an honorary physician, became the first director of anaesthetics in Australia, a position he was to hold for only three years as he retired from it in 1933 and from the active staff of the hospital in 1938.

In 1933 he designed an ingenious piece of apparatus for insufflating ether and this Lidwill machine with some later modifications was destined to become the most ubiquitous anaesthetic machine throughout Sydney for the next thirty or more years. In fact it outlived the designer’s own professional career.

From all reports he had a delightful and friendly personality, a ready wit and was a fluent conversationalist and a most generous host. These attributes, together with the blessing of ruddy good health, allowed him to enjoy to the full his thirty years of retirement virtually up to the day he died. He was able to indulge in the leisure activities which he dearly loved - fishing, yachting and motoring and in the winter before his ninetieth birthday and his death, he drove his car and caravan to North Queensland to escape the cold of his home on the South Coast.

Fortunately, during his lifetime his contributions to medicine generally, and to anaesthetics in particular, were recognised by the University of Sydney in 1911, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1938, and lastly by the Faculty of Anaesthetists, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons which elected him the second Honorary Fellow in 1954. Mark Lidwill is assured of a place in the history of medicine of this country.