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RE: OR table myth 

Any descriptions of early operating tables, particularly wooden ones, that
I've seen have indicated some sort of rim or indentation to allow for
containment or drainage of bodily fluids, similar to modern-day autopsy
tables.  

You might have a look at McCallum's biography of Halsted, where there's a
detailed discussion on the early days (starting in the 1890s) of surgery at
the Hopkins; I think there's even an illustration of the table being
discussed.  Try also the Wangensteens' big book on surgery, which has a
chapter on equipment and procedures.  Citations (from the SF Public Library,
which I hope indicates that these are both readily available to you):

Title :  William Stewart Halsted, surgeon, by W.G. MacCallum; introduction
by Dr. W.H. Welch.  
Author :  MacCallum, W. G. 1874-1944.  
Call Number :  B H166m  
Publisher :  Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins press; London, H. Milford, Oxford
university press, 1930.  
Description :  xvii, 241 p. front., plates, ports., facsims., fold. geneal.
tab. 22 cm.  
Notes :  "References": p. 241.


Title :  The rise of surgery : from empiric craft to scientific discipline /
by Owen H. Wangensteen and Sarah D. Wangensteen.  
Author :  Wangensteen, Owen Harding, 1898-  
Call Number :  617.09 W185r  
Publisher :  Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [1979]  
Subject Heading(s) :  Surgery--History.
Description :  785 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.  
Notes :  Includes indexes.
Bibliography: p. 583-720.
 

Hope these cites help.  I don't think that's an operating table you've got
there; more likely, it's some ward clerk's or administrator's desk.  After
aseptic surgery came into wide acceptance and became standard practice (well
before 1929), operating tables went from wood to enameled metal or stainless
steel.

I've been coping with similar half-truths, rumors and downright wishful
thinking as I run down the history of my company's headquarters, constructed
in 1910.  Big chunks of different types of stone, some of it worked, are
incorporated into one exterior wall, and some larger pieces of obviously
funerary origin were found in the 1980s while the elevator shafts were being
excavated.  The rumors variously described an Indian site and a cemetery.
The facts:  in San Francisco in that era, rubble (mostly from buildings, but
also including toppled monuments and headstones) from the 1906 earthquake
and fire were widely recycled for building construction.  I was kind of
sorry to ruin those garbled perceptions, which over twenty-odd years had
taken on the dimensions of tradition.

Roberto Landazuri
Corporate Archivist
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
100 Potrero Avenue
San Francisco, CA  94103-4813

Tel. (415) 558-0264
Fax (415) 863-1373
e-mail: rdl@dolby.com
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