AHA 19th Spring Meeting

Anesthesiologists may rightly wonder why they should bother to be familiar with the history of anesthesiology. After all, some feel it is unlikely that such information would lead to changes in clinical practice. History-related topics receive short shrift in the didactic curriculum of residency programs, and questions related to history have long disappeared from written and oral board examinations. Nonetheless, our specialty is the only one to have been discovered in the United States, and events that led up to this marvelous gift to mankind occurred within a very narrow time frame in the 1840s. Moreover, these events occurred in rural Georgia, upstate New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Many related sites and memorials are well preserved and open to the public. This fascination with history encourages us to accurately record events, preserve structures as well as artifacts, and gives occasion to celebrate great lives and achievements of the past. One...