ANESTHESIOLOGY came into being during my professional lifetime, achieving recognition as a specialty in the decade prior to World War II. The war brought about profound changes in many areas of medicine, including anesthesiology, and some of these changes persist in current practice.
My decision to embark on a career in a field that in 1938, the year I graduated from medical school, was so new it had hardly been recognized by organized medicine was largely dictated by chance. I was one of those young men who were not sure that a career in any special branch of medicine would be gratifying, especially since the mind-set of my generation leaned toward general practice.
Since my intentions were not firmly set when I chose to become a medical student at New York (NY) University School of Medicine, I spent much of my spare time doing research in nutrition and diabetes with