2020 glimpses through the anesthesia retroprospectroscope. The 1985 John J. Bonica lecture

The Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Washington has grown steadily throughout its first 25 years. Personal reminiscences of old-fashioned anesthesia induction lead to philosophizing on the role of the larynx in the evolution of the human mind and the limited future of computerized administration of anesthesia. Machines will never substitute for the alliance between science and the humane that characterizes modern anesthesiology.