'Yours Sincerely, Barney': Ralph Waters, Barindra Sircar, and the Training of an International Anesthesiologist

In 1936, Ralph Milton Waters accepted a proposal to train an Indian physician who could return home and become the first native anesthesiologist in the subcontinent. Waters founded the United States' first anesthesiology residency in 1927 and in 1937 welcomed Barindra Sircar, MBBS, to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Sircar trained with Waters for two years and did further training with Robert Macintosh and Ivan Magill. He became one of the first specialty-trained anesthesiologists in India and founded the Indian Society of Anaesthesiologists. Fifty-six letters between Sircar and Waters are preserved in the University of Wisconsin archives. The men corresponded until at least 1949, when Waters retired and the archive ends. Sircar's letters were always signed with the nickname he received as a resident: “Yours Sincerely, Barney.”