scholarly journals Wood’s and Guedel’s Legacies Return to the Heartland

2020 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
George S. Bause
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Symposium ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Anesthesia

Pioneering anesthesiologists Paul Wood, M.D., and Arthur Guedel, M.D., were Hoosiers who migrated from America’s Heartland to opposite coasts. Dr. Wood moved east to New York in 1913; Dr. Guedel, west to California in 1928. By 1962, each pioneer had been honored with a namesake anesthesia museum. Fast-forwarding 55 yr, two young anesthesia historians, California’s Jane Moon, M.D., and Pennsylvania’s Melissa Coleman, M.D., met at the 2017 International Symposium of the History of Anesthesia in Boston. Today, these women are chairs of the Wood Library-Museum’s Archives and Museum Committees, respectively. As the newest authors of “Anesthesiology Reflections,” Drs. Coleman and Moon leave their coastal states semiannually for board meetings at the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, returning as legacies of Drs. Wood and Guedel…back to the American Heartland.

24. The controversial conquering of pain

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
D. Van Heerden
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Operating Room ◽  
Anaesthetic Agent ◽  
Massachusetts General Hospital ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clinical Anaesthesia ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Anesthesia ◽  
External Growth

Before the extensive use of anaesthesia, great surgeons were measured by how little pain could be caused to patients in the shortest possible time. Simple operations, such as the extraction of rotting teeth, were terrible nightmares to patients. Some people compared surgery to the Spanish inquisition and there are many accounts in the literature of yells, screams, panicking, and resistance in the operating room. Because of this, before anaesthesia, surgery was mainly restricted to amputations and external growth removals and little advancements could be made over hundreds of years. Five men make the claim to have conquered the horror of surgery in the operating room by discovering ether as an anaesthetic agent: William T.G. Morton, Charles T. Jackson, Crawford W. Long, Horace Wells, and William Clarke. However, only William T.G. Morton is credited with discovering ether as an anaesthetic agent. Mr. Morton publicly used ether during the excision of a tumour from a patient’s neck on October 16, 1846 at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. But William T.G. Morton was not the saint that he portrayed himself to be. There is no doubt that he made the first public discovery of anaesthesia but there is doubt as to whether it was because of his great knowledge and research in the field, or because he took advantage of an opportunity to display this borrowed method to the public. Keys TE. The History of Surgical Anaesthesia. New York: Dover Publications, 1963. Smith HM, Bacon DR. The History of Anesthesia. Clinical Anaesthesia. (PG Barash, B. Cullen, RK Stoeling, eds.) Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, 2006. Wolffe RJ. Tarnished Idol. California: Norman Publishing Company, 2001.

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