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August 1996
Volume 60 |
Number 8
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TO THE MEMBERSHIP
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| One Hundred Fifty
Years Later |
Erwin Lear, M.D.
Editor
We are about to recall with great nostalgia the beginnings of
modern anesthesia. Shortly before the ASA Annual Meeting this
October, the 150th anniversary of W.T.G. Morton's first demonstration
of the use of ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital
will be celebrated. This demonstration occurred in October 1846,
and for the next 100 years, scientific progress was slow when
compared to the last 50 years.
As one browses the current issue of the NEWSLETTER, the
articles by Jeffrey E. Fletcher, Ph.D., Bert N. La Du, Jr., M.D.,
Ph.D., Sérgio L. Primo-Parmo, Ph.D., Paula M. Bokesch,
M.D., and Gudarz Davar, M.D., cannot fail to impress the reader
with the degree of progress achieved in reaching inside the cell
membrane to expand our horizons of knowledge. We have shifted
attention from droplets of ether to molecular entities; from stages
and planes to "ligand-gated ion channels"; and from
the dibucaine number to chromosome 19q13.1 and the ryanodine receptor.
During the first 100 years of anesthesia, anyone from the hall
porter to a nurse to a medical student armed with a rag and a
can of ether could administer anesthesia. Today, the easily acquired
technical skills of running an anesthesia machine and intubating
a patient no longer suffice. The detailed knowledge of medical
disorders as set forth herein, for example, emphasizes the importance
of medical research in the practice of anesthesiology.
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