In Cleveland, Ohio, just a few miles from where Charles K. Teter, D.D.S., founded the United States’ second major anesthesia machine manufacturing company, stands the celebrated Cleveland Museum of Art. Housed in that museum is a wood-and-ivory box from Byzantium (later Constantinople, then Istanbul) dating back to ca.1050 CE. One of the carved-ivory scenes (above) on the lid of the box depicts the biblical account from the book of Genesis of the creation of Eve after a “deep sleep” falls upon Adam. The Byzantine lettering can be transliterated to ADAM HYPNOSAS EVA EXELTHEN EK TIS PLEURA AUTOU and can be translated to “Here Eve came from out of a flank of sleeping Adam.” Generations of scholars have suggested that the Genesis account of Adam’s heavy slumber strongly resembles the “modern” state of general anesthesia. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
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In Cleveland, Ohio, just a few miles from where Charles K. Teter, D.D.S., founded the United States’ second major anesthesia machine manufacturing company, stands the celebrated Cleveland Museum of Art. Housed in that museum is a wood-and-ivory box from Byzantium (later Constantinople, then Istanbul) dating back to ca.1050 CE. One of the carved-ivory scenes (above) on the lid of the box depicts the biblical account from the book of Genesis of the creation of Eve after a “deep sleep” falls upon Adam. The Byzantine lettering can be transliterated to ADAM HYPNOSAS EVA EXELTHEN EK TIS PLEURA AUTOU and can be translated to “Here Eve came from out of a flank of sleeping Adam.” Generations of scholars have suggested that the Genesis account of Adam’s heavy slumber strongly resembles the “modern” state of general anesthesia. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

In Cleveland, Ohio, just a few miles from where Charles K. Teter, D.D.S., founded the United States’ second major anesthesia machine manufacturing company, stands the celebrated Cleveland Museum of Art. Housed in that museum is a wood-and-ivory box from Byzantium (later Constantinople, then Istanbul) dating back to ca.1050 CE. One of the carved-ivory scenes (above) on the lid of the box depicts the biblical account from the book of Genesis of the creation of Eve after a “deep sleep” falls upon Adam. The Byzantine lettering can be transliterated to ADAM HYPNOSAS EVA EXELTHEN EK TIS PLEURA AUTOU and can be translated to “Here Eve came from out of a flank of sleeping Adam.” Generations of scholars have suggested that the Genesis account of Adam’s heavy slumber strongly resembles the “modern” state of general anesthesia. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
View largeDownload slide

In Cleveland, Ohio, just a few miles from where Charles K. Teter, D.D.S., founded the United States’ second major anesthesia machine manufacturing company, stands the celebrated Cleveland Museum of Art. Housed in that museum is a wood-and-ivory box from Byzantium (later Constantinople, then Istanbul) dating back to ca.1050 CE. One of the carved-ivory scenes (above) on the lid of the box depicts the biblical account from the book of Genesis of the creation of Eve after a “deep sleep” falls upon Adam. The Byzantine lettering can be transliterated to ADAM HYPNOSAS EVA EXELTHEN EK TIS PLEURA AUTOU and can be translated to “Here Eve came from out of a flank of sleeping Adam.” Generations of scholars have suggested that the Genesis account of Adam’s heavy slumber strongly resembles the “modern” state of general anesthesia. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

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George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Honorary Curator and Laureate of the History of Anesthesia, Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Schaumburg, Illinois, and Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. UJYC@aol.com.

Copyright © 2016, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Inc. Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2016