Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology

While convalescing Wood began to catalogue his personal library, which he had been building since he was a medical student, and told ASA founder Dr. Adolph Frederick Erdmann[1] that he wanted to create a museum dedicated to the history of anesthesiology.

Erdmann gave him a collection of books and anesthesiology apparatus to add to his own library as the nucleus of the project.

One of the first things he did was to approach Robert H. Ferguson, a retired anesthesiologist whom Erdmann had told him owned the largest collection of specialist books and apparatus in the US.

The next year they received another invitation, this time to create an exhibit for the American Medical Association's annual meeting in San Francisco in June 1938.

The Library-Museum, which by now had expanded from its original 70 books to over 160 thanks to donations from ASA members (and had also greatly enlarged its collection of apparatus), provided the core of both exhibits.

The larger location had space for more apparatus and members soon started making gifts of their old equipment, including some very early anesthetic delivery systems.

The collection has now expanded to around 13,000 books, and the library also contains both US and international medical journals (over 50,) newsletters, biographical material and archives of photos and digital images.

[4] The John W. Pender Living History of Archaeology is a multimedia collection containing audio recordings of prominent anesthesiologists.

The museum houses a large collection of anesthesiology apparatus ranging from 19th century masks and inhalers[5] for administering ether and chloroform to anesthetic machines.