Surgery in UC Hospital operating room, 1924.

Surgery in UC Hospital operating room, 1924.

Photo courtesy of: Calisphere. Collection: UCSF History Collection; Owning Institution: UC San Francisco, Library, University Archives.

The Operating Room as a Time Machine

For more than a century, the operating room has quietly recorded not only what surgical culture values, but also how medicine responds to uncertainty and responsibility, and holds the accumulated stories of patients whose lives unfolded there.
February 24, 2026