by Joyce Slaton posted in Mom Stories

In the surreal moments after you've given birth, your brand new baby is given a quick once-over by your practitioner, who'll tell you afterward what your baby's Apgar score is. You may have no idea what it means, only that everything's okay, or it's not.
The Apgar test evaluates a newborn's muscle tone, heart rate, reflex response, color, and breathing, or "Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance, and Respiration." That must be how the test got its name, right" Nope. The Apgar test is named after its inventor, Dr. Virginia Apgar, a real anesthesiologist who developed her score in 1952 as a way to summarize a newborn's health and the effects of obstetric anesthesia on babies. (The acronym was retrofitted later.)
Dr. Apgar killing it in cat's eye glasses in 1959While serving as the director of the new Division of Anesthesia at Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in NYC, Apgar was distressed by the high U.S. infant mortality rates in the first 24 hours after birth. She wondered: Could these newborns be saved if they were examined closely and in a standardized fashion after birth"
A lack of oxygen played a major role in at least half of the deaths of newborns, and Apgar realized that if babies having trouble breathing were identified and given resuscitation treatment and, if needed, oxygen, promptly, many of them would be saved.

Can you find Dr. Apgar in this 1955 photo of Co...