NYMC Faculty Publications

Thomas Drysdale Buchanan, MD, and the Birth of Academic Anesthesiology

Author Type(s)

Faculty

DOI

10.1213/ANE.0000000000006030

Journal Title

Anesthesia and Analgesia

First Page

888

Last Page

895

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-1-2022

Department

Health Sciences Library

Second Department

Anesthesiology

Abstract

Thomas Drysdale Buchanan, MD (1876-1940), founding president of the American Board of Anesthesiology, was the first person in the United States to hold the title "Professor of Anesthesiology" in a medical school faculty position dedicated exclusively to the specialty. An 1897 graduate of New York Medical College, Dr Buchanan joined the faculty of his alma mater in 1902 in response to demands by medical students and recent graduates for a dedicated instructor in anesthesia. Within a decade, the instructorship had become a professorship, and Dr Buchanan was on his way to distinction as one of the founders of academic anesthesiology. This chapter in Dr Buchanan's early career illustrates how anesthesiology took shape as a distinct body of knowledge during the formative decades of modern medical education at the turn of the century, laying the groundwork for its recognition 30 years later as a specialty in its own right.

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