Gauging the Herrick-Pender Thermistor: Marvelous Monitoring, from Open Fridge to Open Heart

After completing his World War II Navy assignment, John William Pender, M.D. (1912 to 2002,lower right), returned in 1946 to anesthesiology training at Mayo Clinic. While trialing hypothermia protocols in cardiac surgery, Pender and his team used thermistors from electric refrigerators ( “fridges”)—modern marvels of the mid-twentieth-century kitchen. By encapsulating metallic oxide beads in epoxy, these “thermal resistors” were more responsive and less toxic than mercury-based thermometers. Unfortunately, these “resistors” lacked a proper temperature gauge. Pender reac hed out to Julia F. Herrick, Ph.D. (upper right), a biophysicist recently back from the war effort and now studying physiologic thermometry. She lent him a prototype thermistor (left) until commercial models became available. The two collaborators would emerge as leaders in their respective fields. Dr. Herrick became President of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and founding editor of their journal in 1954; Dr. Pender became President of the Academy of Anesthesiology in 1965. (Photos of Drs. Herrick and Pender by permission of Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Courtesy of The W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.www.woodlibrarymuseum.org)
Source: Anesthesiology - Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: research