Vignettes from the history of pediatric surgery

Abstract

A series of historical vignettes were shared with the membership of the American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA) in the months leading up to its 50th anniversary meeting in May, 2019. Some stories were less-known episodes from the lives of such prominent figures as William Ladd and C. Everett Koop. Others highlighted were surgeons who made significant contributions but with time have been overlooked. Examples included Herbert Coe and Oswald Wyatt, the first surgeons to devote their practices entirely to infants and children; Helen Noblett, a pediatric surgeon in Melbourne who invented a now standard device perfectly suited to sample the rectal mucosa of infants suspected of having Hirschsprung Disease; and Barbara Barlow, who fed baby rats in her Manhattan apartment to show the protective effect of breast milk on the development of experimental necrotizing enterocolitis. Great achievements were commemorated, including Morio Kasai's operation for biliary atresia, Judah Folkman's discoveries, and Lester Martin's quest for a suitable operation for teenagers with ulcerative colitis. The golden anniversary of the founding of APSA made it appropriate to recount some of the backstories behind the effort to establish a board of pediatric surgery with certification authority and the organization of APSA itself. A few anecdotes were whimsical: the story behind the first central venous cannula; how the specialty came to be called pediatric surgery; and why Robert Gross' textbook was exactly 1,000 pages long and was published with one critical chapter missing. Taken together, the vignettes of the field's surgeons, both notable and lesser-known, and their achievements show the richness of the specialty's heritage.

Keywords: American Pediatric Surgical Association; History of pediatric surgery; Pediatric surgery.