Abstract
This bibliography records the 88 papers published by Australian and New Zealand authors in the Proceedings of the first nine International Symposia on the History of Anaesthesia (ISHA).
Each ISHA has produced a published Proceedings of each symposium and these form an extremely valuable medical history research resource of over 850 papers. These have been published by a variety of anaesthesia societies, medical publishers and other bodies from around the world. Nearly all of these Proceedings had one small print run and most are now out of print and often unavailable.
There is a definite need for all ISHA Proceedings to date to be available at one online site for ease of access for future historians studying the history of anaesthesia, intensive care, pain medicine, resuscitation and related fields. Scanning of early Proceedings with appropriate publisher, author and editorial approval would facilitate this.
We now live in a time of instant access to the vast majority of all online medical information via PubMed, even that going back to before the advent of Medline (preMedline = pre-1946), often facilitated by membership of professional and government bodies, organisations and academic institutions. This has provided a search facility that will let the historical medical researcher perform an extensive search for relevant literature. Many major medical journals have free access to their earlier publications even up to one year previously. Open access journals provide free access as part of their philosophy. Also, Google and some academic institutions have scanned many ‘forgotten books’ from major medical libraries around the world giving access to previously rare and hard to obtain volumes.
Proceedings of the International Symposia on the History of Anaesthesia
The International Symposia on the History of Anaesthesia (ISHA) started with the first meeting in Rotterdam in 1982 with the most recent (9th ISHA) being held in Boston in October 2017. These are held approximately every four to five years. Each meeting has been independently organised by the host country. The 10th ISHA will be held in Kobe, Japan, in 2021.
Proceedings have been published for each symposium (Table 1) and these form an extremely valuable medical history research resource of over 850 papers. These have been published by a variety of anaesthesia societies, medical publishers and other bodies. Nearly all of these Proceedings had one small print run and are now out of print and unavailable and almost certainly do not generate any income for their publisher when still available online. Many Proceedings are not held by major libraries around the world, especially in non–English-speaking countries, which makes access to a complete set of these Proceedings extremely difficult for the medical historical researcher, and only a few are available on line—the 3rd ISHA in London in 1992 and the 5th from Santiago in 2001. 1 , 2 These ISHA Proceedings have papers from many of the countries on earth and represent a truly unique and diverse body of literature on the history of anaesthesia and related disciplines.
All International Symposia on the History of Anaesthesia Proceedings.
Other national anaesthesia history societies and groups publish their papers in peer reviewed journals which are now available on line via PubMed or on the organisation or journal website. 3 , 4 In the USA, the Anesthesia History Association Newsletter started in 1982 and in July 1995 became the Bulletin of Anesthesia History, which was indexed. This has continued to grow and now takes its shape as the Journal of Anesthesia History (JAH) and the earlier newsletters and bulletins are available at the JAH website. 5 An online resource of the contents from all the published ISHA Proceedings has recently become available. 6
The purpose of this bibliography is to record all the papers published in the ISHA Proceedings to date by Australian and New Zealand authors (Table 2) to document their contributions and allow for easier discovery of these valuable contributions. There may have been an occasional paper that was presented at the symposium at the time but was never published in the Proceedings. These are not recorded.
Papers published in all ISHA Proceedings by Australian and New Zealand authors.
(A) denotes abstract only.
Conclusion
There is a definite need for all ISHA Proceedings to date to be available at the one online site for ease of access for future historians studying the history of anaesthesia, intensive care, pain medicine, resuscitation and related fields. Scanning of early Proceedings with publisher and editorial approval would facilitate this.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
