Kalamazoo’s Borgess Hospital (right) was named after the second Roman Catholic Bishop of Detroit, Michigan. As depicted on this 1919 postcard, that hospital’s handsomely appointed “Anaesthetic Room” (left) featured a three-wheeled trolley or gurney for patient transport and conical glass bottles for administering fluids to patients. A peaceful spot adjacent to the hustle and bustle of the operating suite, the induction room, once the poster child for improving operating room utilization, is now an uncommon feature in most U.S. hospitals. Perhaps inspired by the tricycle trolley and other devices with which a lone practitioner could treat a patient, a Borgess surgeon, Homer Stryker, M.D. (1894 to 1980), would later invent his Stryker frame for turning burned or spinally injured patients and his Stryker saw for splitting orthopedic casts. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. www.woodlibrarymuseum.org)
Kalamazoo’s Borgess Hospital (right) was named after the second Roman Catholic Bishop of Detroit, Michigan. As depicted on this 1919 postcard, that hospital’s handsomely appointed “Anaesthetic Room” (left) featured a three-wheeled trolley or gurney for patient transport and conical glass bottles for administering fluids to patients. A peaceful spot adjacent to the hustle and bustle of the operating suite, the induction room, once the poster child for improving operating room utilization, is now an uncommon feature in most U.S. hospitals. Perhaps inspired by the tricycle trolley and other devices with which a lone practitioner could treat a patient, a Borgess surgeon, Homer Stryker, M.D. (1894 to 1980), would later invent his Stryker frame for turning burned or spinally injured patients and his Stryker saw for splitting orthopedic casts. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. www.woodlibrarymuseum.org)
Melissa L. Coleman, M.D., Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, and George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Wood-Library Museum Curator Emeritus.
