3 - History of Anaesthesia Society

Professor J Steinhaus (~tlanta)
The grcnvth and develo~mnt of the specialty of anaesthesiology in the
United States beyan in a somewhat unusual pattern in that its early Start
was in the ?lidwe-st instead of the larger and more sophisticated medical
centres on t'?e East coast. Tne pioneer anaest!!esiologists, Ralph Waters and
John Lundy buiLt their prqamnes in mdison, Wisconsin and Rochester,
Minnesota respectively, in the 1920's and 1930's. They were approximately
150 miles aprt located in m11 cities that, ccmbined, my have had a
population Of 100,000 people. The Lhiversity of Wisconsin at Madison was a
large state university with a medical school that had just added two years
clinical instruction to Wcome a four year school. Mayo Clinic was a
successful surgical clinic with no direct academic relation.
mmly's early life
Job LUIKIY ~ 13s brn in 1894, and reared in North Wota. His father was a
physician and ha \=S acqaahted with anaesthetic administration in kis
early years. He administered anaesthesia in dentists' and physicians'
offices while he was a teenager and attended a dmnstration of the
Heidbrink Anaesthetic Machine at the age of 16. He attended college at the
University of North Dakota and graduated from Rush Medical College in
Chicago. He practised his early a~esthesia with the aid of a Gwathmey No.1
gas mchine which he transported between hospitals. In 1924, as the newly
elected secretary of the King County Medical Society, he met William Mayo,
the guest speaker at a society meeting. Having arranged to sit across from
the invited speaker, their conversation led to Lundyls vitation to c m
to the Mayo Clinic and organise a Section of Anaesthesia. P'
W3ters' fozlmtive years
Ralph Waters w3s reared and educated in Ohio and graduated from Western
Reserve University Medical School in 1912. He began medical practice h
Sioux City, Iowa and in the early years decided to limit himself to
obstetrics and anaesthesia. Although it was c m n for medical colleagues
to exchange the administration of anaesthetics for each others' patients he
agreed to give all the anaesthetics for a well established surgeon in
exchange for the use of a new nitrous oxide machine which the surgeon had
pchasecf in ~oledo.~ With his mornings filled with hospital practice,
Water organised an ambulatory anaesthesia clinic in downtown Sioux City in
1916. 3
He moved t:, Kansas City in 1923 and continued outpatient anaesthesia with
its m recovery rooms with his hospital practice until he left for
Madison, Wisconsin in 1927. Curing this interval, his interest often
Focuss.d on physiological and pharmacological problems. He reported a case
of resuscitatio which was essentially cardiac compression with high
presstrrs oxyqen? a prredure substantiated at a much later date by Jacoby
in the laboratory. He developed a major interest in carbn dioxide and
correspnderl with the pharrmcologist Dennis Jackson who had anaesthetised