News from Mayo Clinic Libraries

Event: Mayo Clinic Department of Anesthesiology Centennial

The next Mayo Clinic History of Medicine Society lecture, “The Mayo Clinic Department of Anesthesiology Centennial: Innovations That Have Advanced the Specialty and Medicine in General,” will be on April 9, 2024, at 6 pm CT. Mark Warner, M.D., Annenberg Professor of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic Department of Anesthesiology, Rochester, MN will present the lecture.

The Mayo Clinic Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine was officially formed on April 1, 1924. In its first century, the department has played pivotal roles in various important developments that have advanced the specialty of anesthesiology. These include:

• Dedicated nurses at Mayo Clinic who delivered anesthesia in the 1890s, starting the field of nurse anesthesia.
• Advocacy for using regional anesthesia techniques to support surgical practices.
• Early trials that led to the use of sodium pentothal.
• Implementation of the nation’s first blood bank.
• Start of the nation’s first postoperative intensive care unit.
• Creation of the intravenous catheter and the Tuohy epidural needle.
• Training of “90-day wonders,” physicians trained in anesthesiology during World War II, many of whom became major leaders of the specialty.
• Co-founding and leadership of specialty organizations such as the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists.
• Design of the Mayo Gibbons heart-lung bypass machine.

This presentation will focus on these innovations and the remarkable Mayo Clinic staff members that have influenced advances in anesthesiology and medicine in general.

>More information about the event and how to attend in person or online is available on the event website.