Campus exhibit illustrates evolution of anesthesia and highlights connection to KU Medical Center
“Anecdotes in Anesthesia” tells the story of 120 years of anesthesia through artifacts and storytelling.
To mark the 60th anniversary of the University of Kansas School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology, the Clendening History of Medicine Library and Museum has a special exhibit on display about the history of anesthesia.
The exhibit runs through Oct. 16, 2026, and is located on the first floor of the Robinson Building on the KU Medical Center campus in Kansas City. The library is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The exhibit came together thanks to Anthony Kovac, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, pain and perioperative medicine, who frequently researches history at the library.
“He wondered if it would be possible to highlight this history in an exhibit,” said Jamie Rees, M.A., museum curator and manager of historical collections. “We looked at our collections and realized we had some amazing stories about anesthesiologists going back even further than 60 years.”
One of those stories has a connection to the first chief anesthesiologist at Bell Hospital in 1916. Orval Cunningham, M.D. (1880-1937), had a reputation for expertise in both anesthesia and mechanical engineering that led him on an extraordinary journey.
be administered in a variety of ways.
During the 1918 influenza pandemic, Cunningham noticed that his patients died cyanotic — or blue from oxygen deprivation. While on vacation in Colorado he observed that pneumonia fatalities were higher at high altitudes.
Back in Kansas, he adapted a large, compressed-air tank into a hyperbaric chamber — a first — treating pneumonia and influenza cases with great success. He then acquired a house in Kansas City, Missouri, and converted it into a clinic with a larger hyperbaric chamber, successfully treating a variety of conditions including hypoxia, high blood pressure, glaucoma, diabetes and polio.
In 1928, Cunningham built a hyperbaric sanitarium with the help of industrialist Henry H. Timken, and eventually a 75-room luxury “hyperbaric hotel” in Ohio. His success there was short-lived, and the exhibit reveals the inauspicious ending to the project.
Rees said the in-person exhibit has been a success, just as the library’s digital collections have come back online after the staff updated and modernized them. History buffs can enjoy letters written by Florence Nightingale and class composite photographs from the schools of Health Professions, Medicine and Nursing. Rees said the online collections have had visitors from 29 different countries, with most coming from France, China and the United Kingdom. More collections are coming soon.