Emery Andrew Rovenstine

Emery Andrew Rovenstine
Dr. Rovenstine administering an anesthetic
Born	July 20, 1895 Atwood, Indiana, USA
Died	November 9, 1960 (1960-11-10) (aged 65) New York, USA
Education	Wabash College, Indiana University
Medical career
Profession	Physician

Emery Andrew Rovenstine (July 20, 1895 – November 9, 1960) was an American anesthesiologist best known for organizing the first academic Department of Anesthesiology at New York's Bellevue Hospital. He also helped develop the anesthetic use for the gas cyclopropane, and he was a pioneer in therapeutic nerve blocking. Upon his death in 1960, the New York Times proclaimed him "one of the world's foremost anesthesiologists."

Dr. Rovenstine was born in 1895, in Atwood, Indiana, where he clerked at his father’s grocery store. He briefly attended Winona College in nearby Winona Lake and taught high school before moving on to Wabash College, where he was graduated in 1917. Upon graduation, Rovenstine enlisted in the Army and served in France during World War I. During his three years of active duty, much of which he spent in charge of an engineering demolition squad, he witnessed battlefield pain and suffering which inspired him to pursue a career in medicine.

After returning home for several years of teaching and coaching, he decided to attend medical school at Indiana University, from which he received a degree in medicine in 1928. In 1930, after struggling to maintain a general practice during economically difficult times, he took a faculty post at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied under Dr. Ralph M. Waters and served as assistant professor of anesthesia. He and Waters experimented on the gas cyclopropane and were the first doctors to use it on human subjects.

In 1935, Rovenstine was appointed chair of the department of anesthesiology at Bellevue Hospital, where he was influential in shaping the department’s mission and mentoring future generations of anesthesiologists. During this time he developed a nerve blocking technique and became the first anesthesiologist to set up a nerve blocking clinic for pain relief. Two years later, he was appointed the second American professor of anesthesiology at New York University School of Medicine.