On the cover of its August 10, 1889, issue, the American satirical weekly magazine Judge portrayed Christopher Columbus with his left hand planting an 1892 banner and his right one pointing a sword to a map of Manhattan. Neither depicted act by Columbus would prove correct with regards to the upcoming 400th anniversary celebration of his “discovering America.” Bypassing New York City, the U.S. Congress selected Chicago to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, and that world’s fair actually occurred in 1893. Frankly, Manhattan or Chicago would have suited as an exposition site for the “Master of the Science and Art of Anaesthesia,” Pittsburgh’s Samuel J. Hayes, D.D.S., M.S.A. (1833 to 1897). At “Chicago’s Columbian Exposition,” orange-covered copies of the world’s first anesthesia journal, The Dental & Surgical Microcosm, were distributed by Dr. Hayes, the journal’s proprietor and controlling editor. Each journal advertised the nearby Post Graduate School of Anaesthesia, which Hayes had founded. Weekday mornings, physicians and dentists at Hayes’ school learned how to administer anesthesia; in the afternoons, postgraduates were free to attend the Columbian Exposition. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

On the cover of its August 10, 1889, issue, the American satirical weekly magazine Judge portrayed Christopher Columbus with his left hand planting an 1892 banner and his right one pointing a sword to a map of Manhattan. Neither depicted act by Columbus would prove correct with regards to the upcoming 400th anniversary celebration of his “discovering America.” Bypassing New York City, the U.S. Congress selected Chicago to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, and that world’s fair actually occurred in 1893. Frankly, Manhattan or Chicago would have suited as an exposition site for the “Master of the Science and Art of Anaesthesia,” Pittsburgh’s Samuel J. Hayes, D.D.S., M.S.A. (1833 to 1897). At “Chicago’s Columbian Exposition,” orange-covered copies of the world’s first anesthesia journal, The Dental & Surgical Microcosm, were distributed by Dr. Hayes, the journal’s proprietor and controlling editor. Each journal advertised the nearby Post Graduate School of Anaesthesia, which Hayes had founded. Weekday mornings, physicians and dentists at Hayes’ school learned how to administer anesthesia; in the afternoons, postgraduates were free to attend the Columbian Exposition. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

Close modal

George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Honorary Curator and Laureate of the History of Anesthesia, Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Schaumburg, Illinois, and Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. UJYC@aol.com.