Gaston Labat, the Mayo Clinic, and the Introduction of Regional Anesthesia to the United States

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, transatlantic medical research and training was largely dominated by Western European hospitals. Americans trained in German, Austrian, French, and British medical schools and hospitals, and then returned to work in relatively subpar hospitals and medical schools in the U.S. This relationship was reversed after wwi, with European doctors seeking transition to a comparatively well-funded and respected medical community in the U.S. Recruited in 1920 from a French hospital system to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the young surgeon Gaston Labat (1897–1934) became a pioneer in the development of regional anesthesiology and pain management practices in America, establishing the Mayo Clinic as a leader in this nascent field. Published in the U.S. in 1922, Labat’s textbook Regional Anesthesia was based upon his earlier years of work in Paris and came to define the field over the subsequent decades. Labat moved to Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and in 1923 founded the American Society of Regional Anesthesia (asra). The asra acted as an engine of transformation in the professionalization of the field of anesthesia in the U.S. and formed part of the organized response to the opioid crises that emerged in the early twentieth century. Labat’s story serves as a window into this period of transition in global medical leadership and the introduction of regional anesthesiology and acute pain management, based upon European medical practice.