The Horatio C. Wood Professorship of Anesthesiology

Horatio C. Wood

The Professorship was established in 1982 by the Department of Anesthesiology to honor Horatio C. Wood, MD (1841–1920), a distinguished alumnus of the Perelman School of Medicine Class of 1862.

Dr. Wood became Clinical Professor of Neurology at the School in 1875, was named Professor of Materia Medica in 1876, and conducted his medical practice at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A prolific author, his Therapeutics: Its Principles and Practice, published in 1874, was credited with advancing American therapeutics to scientific status. Dr. Wood’s research interests were broad, but his work in anesthesia and, particularly, his analysis of the pharmacologic basis for the complications encountered with general anesthesia won international attention, profoundly influencing anesthetic practice.


 

Mark D. NeumanCurrent Chairholder

Mark D. Neuman, MD

Dr. Mark Neuman's research focuses on improving patient-centered outcomes for older adults undergoing surgery and anesthesia. He is the founding Director of the Center for Perioperative Outcomes Research and Transformation, which focuses on promoting high-quality comparative effectiveness research and implementation science to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of care for patients with surgical conditions and other acute illnesses.

Dr. Neuman is the principal investigator of the REGAIN multicenter trial, a PCORI-funded international randomized trial comparing the impact of spinal anesthesia versus general anesthesia on functional recovery up to one year after hip fracture surgery. Other work has used retrospective methods to evaluate the relationship between the quality of acute and post-acute care and long-term outcomes, such as the recovery of functional independence, among patients hospitalized with hip fractures and other acute conditions.

Dr. Neuman is a graduate of Yale University and UCSF; after completing his residency in anesthesiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 2008, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Penn from 2008-2010. He is an Associate Editor of Anesthesiology and was the 2015 recipient of the American Society of Anesthesiologists' Presidential Scholar Award, given once annually by this society to recognize outstanding achievements in scholarship by an early-career faculty member. In 2015, he also received the University of Pennsylvania's Marjorie A. Bowman Award for excellence in health services research.

Previous Chairholders

  • Bryan E. Marshall, MD 1982–2002
  • David E. Longnecker, MD 2004–2005
  • David M. Eckmann, MD, PhD 2008-2019