135 pioneering years of the Western Surgical Association

The Western United States in the late 19th century was a vast and unique place to practice medicine. Surgeons traveled by horse and buggy and operated in homes on kitchen tables using kerosene lamps. Communication was difficult, hospitals were rudimentary, trained nurses were sparse, formal training programs were in their infancy, and opportunities to attend meetings were rare. As an editorial in the Kansas Medical Journal stated, “We are so much cut off from the East and South that it is imperative that we create for ourselves a society that will foster the true scientific spirit and give us a better knowledge of each other.”1 In 1891, a group of physicians convened to establish a surgical society to address the challenges unique to the frontier and the surgeons who served it; now known as the Western Surgical Association, our society celebrates 135 years of the cultivation, promotion, and diffusion of the art and science of surgery.