Celebrating surgeons on March 30

Mar 01, 2021 Re-posted from the March 2021 issue of Vascular Specialist

By Beth Bales

The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Foundation recognizes and thanks all SVS surgeons and physicians on National Doctors’ Day, which falls on March 30.

This annual observance began in 1933 in Winder, Georgia, when Eudora Brown Almond, wife of Charles B. Almond, MD, wanted to have a day to honor physicians. The day honors the work and dedication provided by doctors to their patients and communities.

Although celebrated informally since then, President George W. Bush signed a resolution in 1990 to make the day an officially recognized observance day in the United States.

March 30 marks the anniversary of a doctor using general anesthesia in surgery for the first time. It was on that day in 1842, in Jefferson, Georgia, Crawford Long used ether to anesthetize a patient, named James Venable, and then removed a tumor from his neck without the patient feeling any pain. Thus, Long is now viewed as the pioneer of surgical anesthesia by means of the inhalation of ether.

By 1958, a resolution commemorating Doctors’ Day was adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives.

House of Representatives. The SVS celebrates that medical advance and all others, and thanks, in particular, vascular surgeons throughout the world who spend so much time and energy mastering the subspecialty and saving lives everywhere.

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