Running from 1939–1940, the New York World’s Fair included a Medicine and Public Health Building, which was highlighted in a 95-page volume bound with an orange spine titled Man and His Health … New York World’s Fair 1939. The book’s cover (above) is dominated by the blue image of the building’s mammoth exhibit, “Pulsation of Life”—a 22-foot-tall human model with a pulsating heart. (The guidebook’s color scheme of blue and orange reflects colors traditionally associated with the State of New York.) Near the “Pulsation of Life,” the Winthrop Chemical Company sponsored the “Anesthesia” Exhibit, which was designed by a committee chaired by Paul Meyer Wood, M.D. The success of this exhibit helped inspire Dr. Wood to continue collecting books and apparatus for his namesake library-museum, which he helped relocate from multiple New York sites to Park Ridge, Illinois. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Inc.)
George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Honorary Curator, ASA’s Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Park Ridge, Illinois, and Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. UJYC@aol.com.