allery Signage and Graphics
The ASA Headquarters building houses the world’s largest library and museum devoted to anesthesia, the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (WLM). Occupying one-third of the ground floor of ASA’s building, the WLM gallery displays many of the earliest known ether and chloroform inhalers. This past year, Honorary Curator George S. Bause, M.D., and Collections Supervisor Judith Robins generated graphics and signage for all 50 platforms and display cabinets. Examples are pictured below.

The first square sign above explores “America’s First Anaesthetist” (as discussed earlier in this NEWSLETTER by WLM Vice-President Lydia A. Conlay, M.D., Ph.D.); the second illustrates the WLM’s fortuitous Chicagoland location smack in the middle of the Great Lakes, where much of America’s anesthesia gas machinery was pioneered. To the left, two taller signs salute Drs. Walter Boothby and Lucien Morris. Along with Dr. Frederick Cotton, Dr. Boothby designed a “bubble bottle” for sight measurement of gas flows. Four decades after their first Cotton-Boothby Apparatus, Dr. Morris invented the “first precision vaporizer for administering anesthetic gases,” the Copper Kettle.

Ramping Up the Exhibits
A major challenge in renovating the WLM gallery was the shifting of 200- to 400-pound anesthesia machines on and off the elevated display platforms. Fortunately, ASA had plenty of wooden pallets for building up ramps to each platform.

Moving Walls — Rare Books and Rare Art
Recent renovations in the WLM’s K. Garth Huston, Sr., Rare Book Room (RBR) have expanded shelving space by means of a series of moving walls: a mobile carriage system. The vendor’s initial plans (to orient mobile shelving perpendicular to the RBR’s length) were themselves shelved by the curator. Instead a curatorial design doubled existing shelf space and provided staff safety by paralleling the moving walls to the RBR’s length (see above left). An annotated bibliography of the RBR’s classic tomes will soon be published by our Paul M. Wood Distinguished Librarian, Patrick Sim, M.L.S.

WLM Librarian Karen Bieterman, M.L.I.S., and Library Assistant Margie Jenkins assisted Curator Bause with hanging paintings and prints in our third-floor library. Subsequently, in the first-floor museum gallery, graphic artist William Lyle hung a wall full of watercolors painted by the late Leroy D. Vandam, M.D. Since then, many anesthesiologists mentored by Professor Vandam have found the convex gallery wall to be a moving testament to the artistry of this nationally ranked watercolorist (see above right).

Acquiring Rare Books: Japanese Acu-texts from the R.C. Rudolph Library Over the past 30 years, WLM Acquisitions Chair Charles Tandy, M.D., has cultivated a network of antiquarian bookdealers. Recently, one of his San Francisco dealers alerted the curator about “A Collection of Japanese Medical and Scientific Books from the Library of Richard C. Rudolph, Founder of Asian Studies at UCLA.” With the blessing of Dr. Tandy’s five-member WLM Acquisitions Committee, the curator closed a deal for these remarkable classics on acupuncture and moxibustion:

. Okamoto Ipposhi’s 1693 translation of Jushi keraku hake wage (“Elucidation of the Fourteen Acu-tracts”), from his Chinese source, Hua Shou’s 14th-century work;
2. Hayashi Kyubee’s 1699 Jushikei keibiki no ben (“On the Fourteen Acupuncture Tracts”), also based on Hua Shou;
3. Ogino Gengai’s 1791 Shinkan Geka seiso (“Traditional Surgery”), from his Chinese source, Ch’en Shih-kung’s 1617 work; and
4. the 1854 printing of Hara Nanyo’s 1803 compilation Keiketsu ikai (“Collected Opinions Concerning the Correct Points on the Fourteen Meridians”).

Acquiring Museum Objects: Hedley Inhaler From England
Hedley of Bedford, England, registered his ether inhaler in April 1847. Made of ivory, porcelain or wood, the Hedley Ether Inhaler provided a brief bridge, for some anaesthetists, between their early use of inefficient brass and glass inhalers and their delayed use of inhalers with metal housings. One such wooden Hedley Inhaler is part of the Wellcome Collection in London; another, pictured here, surfaced on the private medical antiques market. To spare the WLM’s pennies, the device was hand-carried on flights from England to Chicagoland via Ireland over 18 hours. Such WLM acquisitions would not be possible without its nimble, responsive Board of Trustees.

Other Museum Acquisitions: A Philadelphia Trio
This nifty threesome was acquired by the WLM from a Pennsylvania medical antiques dealer. Both the green apothecary bottle and the tin hail originally from France. The former contained a “Fluid Extract of Coca”; the latter, Menthol-Borate-Cocaine Pastilles for “afflictions of the throat.” The red Mack & Co. Wholesale Druggists catalog lists a variety of narcotics and anesthetics available in San Francisco from 1891-92. Page 221 features a Truax & Co. Poison Case with chloroform bottle; page 515, John Wyeth & Bros. hypodermic tablets of morphine and of cocaine. Such catalogs are invaluable references for identifying and cataloging our WLM objects.

Facilitating a “Smokin’ Donation” : Dorsch & Dorsch
In May of this year, as wildfires raced through southern Georgia and northern Florida, the curator’s plane landed on a smoke-filled runway in Jacksonville. There he was greeted by the Doctors Dorsch. Jerry and Susan Dorsch are a dynamic and complementary duo, respectively, an academic and a private practitioner. They mused that Jerry provided much of the content and Susan much of the style behind their multi-edition, best-selling text, Understanding Anesthesia Equipment.

For years, Dr. Jerry Dorsch had salvaged obsolete apparatus and anesthesia machines from Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. Many pieces were photographed for inclusion in the “Dorsch & Dorsch” textbook. When a down-sizing in future departmental office space threatened his mini-museum, Dr. Jerry Dorsch contacted the WLM about a Mayo-approved donation of the entire collection. Smoky haze from nearby wildfires surrounds Dr. Jerry Dorsch as he stands behind the moving van.

If you own or learn of a treasure of anesthesia that belongs in your national collection, please contact the Trustees or staff of your Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. Thank you!

George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., is Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.