ANZCA Bulletin June 2012 - final.pdf - Australian and New Zealand ...

Anaesthetic history: Museumreceives valuable historicalgifts from South AmericaThree items of historicalsignificance, including aTakaoka ventilator and aTakaoka universal vaporiser,have been donated to theGeoffrey Kaye Museum ofAnaesthetic History at apresentation in BuenosAires, Argentina.At the recent World Congress ofAnaesthesiologists, the honorarycurators of the Geoffrey Kaye Museum,Rod Westhorpe and Christine Ball, wereguests at a historians lunch, hosted bythe Asociación de Anestesia, Analgesia yReanimación de Buenos Aires.The association, whose headquartersare in a suburb of the great city of 14million inhabitants, proudly showed ustheir museum, with its own street frontageand display window.Two of the items donated to themuseum were invented by Braziliananaesthetist and engineer Dr KentaroTakaoka in the 1950s. The Takaokaventilator and the Takaoka universalvaporiser were enormously popular inLatin America, and elsewhere in theworld. The ventilator is particularlyinteresting because of its compact size.The third gift was a copy – one of onlytwo known to remain in existence – ofthe first edition of the journal RevistaArgentina, Anestesia y Analgesia, April,1939. This is one of the earliest anaesthesiajournals ever published and, after beingbrought home very carefully, it is now inthe proud possession of the Geoffrey KayeMuseum.The Geoffrey Kaye Museumof Anaesthetic History enjoys aninternational reputation as one of themajor collections in the world and manyinternational historians admire andenvy the role the museum has playedin furthering professional and publicknowledge of the history and practiceof anaesthesia.The visit to the World Congressof Anaesthesiologists gave us theopportunity to renew the many closerelationships that the museum maintainswith international anaesthesia historians.Christine Ball presented at one of thehistorical sessions. The Buenos Airesassociation presented a fascinatingdisplay throughout the congress,including what is believed to be the oldestfilm of an anaesthetic. Taken in 1899,the film shows the surgical removal ofa hydatid lung cyst. The anaesthetic,believed to be chloroform, is administeredby open drop by a medical student whilethe surgeon, without gloves, mask orheadwear, removes the cyst. The GeoffreyKaye Museum now has a copy of the filmon DVD.The Geoffrey Kaye Museum ofAnaesthetic History and ANZCA areproud supporters of the forthcomingInternational Symposium on the Historyof Anaesthesia, to be held in Sydney inJanuary. A two-day satellite symposiumin Melbourne will follow a few dayslater, when we expect to host manyinternational guests at the College.Dr Rod Westhorpe, Honorary Curator,Geoffrey Kaye Museum of AnaestheticHistoryDr Christine Ball, Honorary AssistantCurator, Geoffrey Kaye Museum ofAnaesthetic History54 ANZCA Bulletin June 2012