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PAIN associated with surgical operations had been a scourge upon mankind long before
the dawn of history; and its searing, agonizing, frightening finger followed the
surgeon’s scalpel like a shadow until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Then, within the short span of four years, means of relief were twice discovered
in a new nation, the United States of America, whose medical men until then had
looked to Europe for leadership in medical progress.
Nature yields her secrets to man only as his mind and his imagination expand sufficiently
to cope with new ideas. Ether had been synthesized by Valerius Cordus in the middle
of the sixteenth century – 300 years before the anesthetic properties were
realized. Humphry Davy, experimenting with “laughing gas,” hinted at
the possibilities of nitrous oxide as a surgical anesthetic in 1800; but nearly
half a century was to pass before surgical patients were to be relieved of fright,
humiliation, agony, and shock on the operating table.
Four men played leading roles in bringing about the advent of anesthesia. Crawford
Williamson Long, a physician, working independently, was first to use ether as an
anesthetic in his practice in Jefferson, Georgia, March 30, 1842. Horace Wells,
a dentist, of Hartford, Connecticut, who used nitrous oxide as an anesthetic in
his dental practice as early as December, 1844, sought to demonstrate its possibilities
for use with surgical patients before Dr. John C. Warren’s class at the Harvard
Medical School in January, 1845, but failed through a technicality. William Thomas
Green Morton, a dentist studying medicine at the time, successfully demonstrated
use of ether as an anesthetic upon a patient undergoing a surgical operation, October
16, 1846, in the operating amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Morton’s
claim to discovery was challenged by Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson, physician and chemist,
whole suggestion led Morton to experiment with highly purified ether.
Conquering pain incident to surgical operation by means of an anesthetic agent probably
was medicine’s greatest gift to mankind up to the time. Ironically, none of
the four men who claimed to have brought it about received the recognition he felt
he deserved. As Robinson wrote; “The four men did not meet in a tavern and
pledge eternal brotherhood as the world rejoiced in the Victory over Pain. Alone
they drank the wine of bitterness, and tasted the lees of hatred. There was limitless
glory for all, but not one would grant a share to another.”
Despite tremendous advances in anesthesia during six score years since its world
wide adoption we still know little about pain. Given by nature as a warning signal
for the protection of life, its mechanisms can be controlled or thwarted, but these
are little understood. Man early turned to his surroundings, seeking to assuage
pain with herbs, leaves, cool water, or mud from the earth that bore him. When man
learned to ferment wine, he created his first anodyne, physical as well as psychic.
A clay tablet impressed in Babylon about 2250 B.C., proposes a remedy to relieve
the pain of toothache. Theophrastus wrote of hellebore for relief of pain in the
fourth century, B.C..: Herodotus the Greek and Susruta the Hindu both discussed
cannabis; Dioscorides in the first century wrote of opium, and knew about mandrake,
essential ingredient of “wine of the condemned.” Used to ease the punishment
tortures of transgressors. Dioschrides, too, was perhaps the first to use the word,
anesthesia. Galen recommended lettuce as an anodyne. Ancient Greeks also knew that
compression of carotid arteries produces insensibility. However, as Robinson stated,
the term, anesthesia, was applied more often by Greek poets and dramatists than
by medical men, and though sensibilities may have been blunted in various ways,
there is no record that ancient Greeks performed operation under anesthesia.
Little progress was made toward relief of pain during the thousand years of the
Middle Ages. Lack of standards for drugs was a primary drawback. The “spongia
somnifera,” a means of inhaling volatile agents, was known in the ninth century.
“Sweet Vitriol” was mentioned in the thirteenth century by Baymondus
Lullius, and again 200 years later by Paracelsus, who distilled it from a mixture
of sulfuric acid and alcohol. Cordus in 1540 described synthesis of a product that
was named “ether” by Frobenius of Germany in 1730. As early as 1513,
monks used alcoholic fumes to alleviate pain. Pare in 1543 used pressure to induce
anesthesia – but the method was nearly as painful as the operation it masked.
Seventeenth century France forbade stupefaction of patients with herbal remedies;
and in the middle of that century, Severino of Naples experimented with refrigeration
anesthesia – which reached limited popularity only in the twentieth century.
While ether remained a laboratory curiosity and a remedy for whooping cough, reduction
of pain during operations was accomplished only as surgeons developed speed in operating.
But by other routes, science was groping for the answer. Priestley and Scheele independently
discovered oxygen about 1771; Lavoisier learned of oxygen’s significance in
respiration in 1792; and these advances gave rise to the school of pneumatic medicine
– those who sought to administer medicines via inhalation. These findings
also became bases for experiments in Britain; by Humphry Davy with nitrous oxide;
by his student. Michael Faraday, with ether; and by Henry Hill Hickman with carbon
dioxide.
Davy, in 1800, at the end of his Researches, wrote “as nitrous oxide in its
extensive operation appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably
be used with advantage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of
blood takes place.” Faraday, in 1818, noted that: “When the vapour of
ether mixed with common air is inhaled, it produces effects very similar to those
occasioned by nitrous oxide.” Hickman, in 1824, carried out a series of experiments
on animals, proving that pain of surgical operations could be abolished by inhalation
of carbon dioxide. Despite extensive publication of works of these men, in England
and in France, no physicians of their day recognized the tremendous import of their
experiments.
Meanwhile, experiments reported by Franz Anton Mesmer of Vienna, as early as 1776,
with “animal magnetism,” were enjoying a popular revival in many European
countries and in the United States. First employment of mesmerism to relieve pain
in surgical patients was by Jules Cloquet, a French surgeon, who removed a breast
from a mesmerized patient. James Braid, surgeon of Manchester, England, was first
to apply the term, hypnotism, to the process. Meanwhile, Samuel Guthrie, physician
turned chemist in upper New York state, in 1831 was distilling “sweet whiskey”
from chloride of lime and alcohol – at about the same time that Soubeiran
in France and Liebig in Germany announced their independent discoveries of a heavy,
sweet, volatile, “chloric ether,”in 1832. Daniel Smith, one of the principal
founders of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, wrote of its delicious flavor
and intoxicating qualities, “more grateful to the taste than hydrated ether.”
In 1834, Dumas, a French chemist, gave the fluid the name of chloroform. Even though
Guthrie’s eight-year old daughter once fell asleep while playing about a vat,
chloroform’s great promise escaped the country doctor’s attention.
While it seems amazing that the idea of anesthesia did not dawn upon medical men
much earlier, in view of these scientific signposts. It must be recognized that
the greatest barrier to evolution of such a concept was the eighteenth century attitude
towards suffering. “Behind the decent, civilized Georgian façade,”
wrote Cartwright, “there lies a callousness, a brutality almost unparalleled
in history. Pain and suffering were held to be of no account; what mattered was
not the degree of pain inflicted, but the fortitude with which it was borne. To
such a mentality, anesthesia would have seemed not the greatest single boon ever
vouchsafed to suffering humanity, but a matter of very minor importance…
“Turn over the pages for fifty years, consider the state of the world in the
eighteen-forties, and we see a very different picture. During that half century…man’s
attitude to suffering had altered instead of being no inevitable and even salutary
part of life, it had become a disease to be cured radically wherever possible. In
such a world, the hideous tortures inflicted by the surgeon upon the helpless sick
were realized to be necessary, but were regarded with horror and disgust…
The acceptance of anesthesia is not just an incidental happening, an unrelated accident…it
is one of the outward signs of a great inward working of men’s minds.”
Though Davy and Faraday failed to attach much importance to pain-relieving properties
of nitrous oxide and of ether, revealed by their experiments, their findings led
to laughing gas lectures and ether frolics of the 1840’s. These popular science
demonstrations, in turn, emboldened Long, Wells, and Morton to attempt what then
seemed incredible-anesthesia for patients undergoing surgical procedures by inhalation
of little-known chemical compounds.
Although controversy over recognition and credit for practical application of the
principle of anesthesia was long and bitter, evidence seems clear that Crawford
Williamson Long was first to use ether for surgical anesthesia for other than dental
operations. It seems clear, also, that William E. Clarke, a chemist, and Elijah
Pope, a dentist, used ether on a patient in Rochester. New York, for extraction
of a tooth, in January, 1842. Dr. Long, having observed that he and his friends
were temporarily insensible to pain following experimental inhalation of ether,
administered ether on a towel held over the face of James M. Venable, and while
he was anesthetized, removed an encysted tumor from the back of the patient’s
neck. This operation was performed March 30, 1842.
.Crawford Long was born November 1, 1815, near Danielsville, Georgia. He was graduated
at nineteen years of age from the University of Georgia, in 1835. After reading
medicine under Dr. Grant of Jefferson, Georgia, he entered the Medical Department
of the University of Pennsylvania in 1838. Among his instructors were Philip Syng
Physick, once a pupil of John Hunter, and George B. Wood and Franklin Bache, who
also were instrumental in development of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and
co-editors of the United States Dispensatory. After graduation in 1839, Long spent
eighteen months “ “walking the hospitals” of New York, studying
surgery, before buying Dr. Grant’s practice and settling in the small Georgia
town of Jefferson. After his first success, Dr. Long used ether whenever he could
persuade surgical or obstetrical patients to permit it. He ran into opposition prejudice,
and rumor among country fold, however, and accumulated but few case histories. Busy
with a large practice, he found no time to report his findings. It was not until
he read of Morton’s “Letheon” anesthetic in the Medical Examiner
of December, 1846, that he was stimulated to write a communication for publication.
Dr. Long was frequently interrupted in his writings, so that the manuscript lay
unfinished until December, 1849, when the paper finally was published in the Southern
Medical and Surgical Journal. By that time, Wells was a suicide, and Morton and
Jackson were embroiled in their famous ether controversy. Crawford Long, his economic
position suffering from the aftermath of the War between the States, carried on
his practice, literally dying “in the harness” as he assisted a new
life into the world, June 6, 1878. To the end, his most cherished treasure was evidence
of his priority of use of ether for anesthesia.
Horace Wells, for a time a successful dentist in Hartford, Connecticut, was born
at Hartford, Vermont, January 21, 1815. After studying dentistry in Boston, he entered
practice in the Connecticut city in 1836. Ingenious and restless, he had several
inventions to his credit. He had taught dentistry to several students, including
William Morton, before witnessing his first laughing gas demonstration on the evening
of December 10, 1844. The following day, Wells persuaded the lecturer, Dr. Gardner
Q. Colton, to administer nitrous oxide to him, and induced a former dental student,
Dr. John Mankey Biggs, to extract a molar. Upon regaining consciousness, he was
elated to note that he had felt no pain. Wells then plunged into manufacture of
nitrous oxide and administered it to fifteen patients with varying success. Full
of enthusiasm, he hurried to Boston, and through efforts of another of his former
dental student, Dr. Morton, secured permission to give a demonstration of painless
tooth pulling before one of the classes of the famous surgeon, Dr. John Collins
Warren, at the Harvard Medical School. On this occasion he failed to administer
sufficient dosage of nitrous oxide; the patient cried out in pain and students jeered
and called the demonstration “humbug.” Wells retreated to Hartford,
temporarily dropped his plans for promotion of laughing gas, and turned to selling
his patented shower bath.
When a year and a half later, Wells’ former partner, Morton, successfully
demonstrated use of ether for anesthesia. Wells sought to establish his claim to
priority..
As the Jackson-Morton battle became more heated. Wells enlisted support in his behalf
in Congress, but this only added to the confusion of the issue. In New York, seeking
support for use of nitrous oxide, Wells was arrested for an act suggesting derangement
and committed suicide while in prison, January 24, 1848.
Though his motives might be questioned and considered anything but altruistic. William
Thomas Green Morton brought the practical application of anesthesia to the attention
of the world. Born on a farm near Chariton, Massachusetts, August 19, 1919, Morton
early evinced a desire to study medicine, but economic circumstances led him, instead,
to study dentistry, perhaps in Baltimore for a time, but not at Baltimore College
of Dental Surgery, as is often claimed. In 1841, he became a student of Dr. Horace
Wells; then, in 1843, he became Wells’ partner for a year. Still yearning
to become a physician, Morton enrolled as a medical student on March 20, 1844, under
Dr. Charles T. Jackson, and in November of that same year, he enrolled in the Harvard
Medical School. Morton continued to practice dentistry and established a factory
for manufacture of false tooth. His method of fitting required removal of all the
“old fangs” – a none too pleasant procedure. Seeking a pain deadener
as a means of popularizing his treatment with patients. Morton tried many things;
champagne, laudanum, opium, and, at the suggestion of Dr. Jackson, sulfuric acid.
Having secured the ear of one of his medical instructors, Dr. Warten, Morton paved
the way for Horace Wells’ demonstration of nitrous oxide at the Harvard Medical
School. Though Wells failed, his successful attempt fired Morton’s imagination.
Morton began experimenting in secret, testing ether on gold fish, on a dog, on two
dental assistants, and on himself. His results were not uniform, and again he consulted
Dr. Jackson. Jackson suggested that he use highly purified ether, so Morton experimented
further, and his results were much better. On September 30, 1846, employing an ether-saturated
handkerchief held over the face. Morton Anesthetized Eben H. Frost, and extracted
a molar successfully without pain. Morton now was in a frenzy of excitement and
enthusiasm. He envisioned a fortune from anesthesia. Morton again approached the
elderly and highly reputed surgeon, Warren, who had once experimented with mesmerism,
and who had used ether in treatment for pulmonary conditions. Upon receiving word
that Dr. Warren would permit his experiment, Morton hastly designed an apparatus
for administering the anesthetic and sought to disguise the identity of ether with
color and aromatics, giving it the name, “Letheop.”
In was on the morning of October 16, 1846, that Gilbert Abbott, suffering from a
tumor of the jaw, was prepared for operation in the emphitheatre of Boston’s
Massachusetts General Hospital. Present besides Dr. Warren were Drs. Charley F.
Heywood (house surgeon), Henry J. Bigelow, Augustus A. Gould, Solomon D. Townsend,
and other prominent surgeons. Morton, readying his apparatus, was late, arriving
just as Dr. Warren was about to proceed. Morton saturated a sponge in the globular
glass inhaler with is disguised ether preparation, spoke calmly to the patient,
put the mouthpiece to his lips, and instructed him to breathe carefully in and out
of the globe. Abbott at first flushed and moved spasmodically, then sank into unconsciousness.
Morton turned to Dr. Warren and said “Sir, your patient is ready.”
Dr. Warren proceeded with the rather complicated task of removing the tumor, and
closed the wound. The patient had only moved his legs a bit and made a few incoherent
sounds. Upon emerging from the effects of the anesthetic, Morton questioned him.
Abbott said he had felt no pain, only a scratching sensation. Dr. Warren is reported
to have turned to his colleagues and students and said: “Gentlemen, this is
no humbug.”
Morton immediately applied for a patent for his discovery. Meantime, on November
7, he administered ether for the first major operation under anesthesia-amputation
at thigh level performed by Dr. Hayward at Massachusetts General Hospital.
On November 12, Patent No.4848 was issued to Charles T. Jackson and William T.G.
Morton for a “new and useful improvement in surgical operations.”
On November 18, there appeared an article in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal,
by Dr. Henry J. Bigelow. The paper had been read, November 9, before the Boston
Society of Medical Improvement. It he described the successful use of Morton’s
procedure. This was the article that introduced the practice of anesthesia to medical
men throughout the world.
Shortly thereafter, surgeons of Massachusetts General Hospital barred Morton and
declined to use his preparation “until informed what it is.” Morton
promptly backed away from his position of secrecy and admitted that the agent which
brought about anesthesia was “sulfuric ether.” From then on, there was
no further opposition in the hospital to performance of operations on patients under
etherization.
The medical profession, once informed, was quick to adopt the use of ether anesthesia.
In Europe there was more ready acceptance of ether anesthesia than in the United
States. The successful surgical operation under anesthesia in the Old World was
performed by Dr. Robert Liston, December 21, 1846, at University College Hospital
of London. One observer of Liston’s amputation of patient’s infected
leg through the thigh that day was a young Quaker, Joseph Lister. As Flexner noted,
had anesthesia not been discovered, surgical antisepsis, as developed twenty years
later by Lister, could not have been achieved.
Though the medical profession generally accepted the principle of surgical anesthesia,
its early course was not smooth. In December, 1846, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner
denounced it as quackery. Both clergymen and laymen denounced it as against God
and nature. Especially was there opposition to use of ether to relieve the pain
of childbirth. Meantime, too, Morton was having his troubles. He had a patent, but
he could not protect it. Very soon, too, it was found that ether, administered from
a saturated sponge or towel, was as effective as when Morton’s complicated
apparatus was used. On December 9, 1846, Horace Wells published in the Hartford
Journal, his claim as discoverer of surgical anesthesia. Dr. Jackson, who had shown
little interest in Morton’s work until Morton began to receive credit in the
press as discoverer of anesthesia, then first advanced his claim of having suggested
use of pure ether. Morton acknowledged his indebtedness to Dr. Jackson, included
his name in the patent application and made an arrangement to share with him profits
expected from licensing. But, as world became interested in anesthesia, Jackson
became more selfish and more assertive. He claimed full credit, saying Morton merely
was his agent. There was shadowy precedent for Jackson’s actions; he had tried
to take credit from Samuel F.B. Morse for invention of the telegraph; and again,
he had tried to take for himself that due Dr. William Beaumont for his students
of gastric function made with the cooperation of Alexis St. Martin, young French-Canadian
with a “window” in his stomach left by a shotgun accident.
In 1847, Morton’s friends, realizing he faced financial difficulties, advised
him to appeal to Congress for compensation. A petition was signed by leading Boston
physicians, and filed with Congress. A representative from Connecticut objected
citing Wells’ credit for discovery of anesthesia. Jackson, meantime, pressed
his claims in Paris with the French Academy of Science.
In 1847, too, Dr. James Young Simpson of Edinburgh, Scotland, began using ether
in his obstetrical practice. Finding ether to have some disagreeable qualities,
such as odor and tendency to irritate bronchi, Simpson searched for replacements.
He tried, on himself and on his associates, such drugs as “chloride of carbon,
acetone, nitric ether, benzene, vapor of iodoform, and chloroform.” He found
chloroform (Guthrie’s “sweet whiskey”) most suitable, and campaigned
vigorously for its use in obstetrics and in surgery. Scottish clergymen objected
to use of chloroform in women in childbirth, contending that labor was pain to be
reduced with patience and fortitude. This controversy was quieted only by the acceptance
of chloroform by Queen Victoria during the birth of her eight child. For a time,
chloroform found considerable favor, due to its less unpleasant odor and because
lower dosage was required for anesthesia; but, as use proved it to be more dangerous,
ether again rose to first choice.
First to manufacture chloroform in Canada was Pharmacist J.D.B. Fraser, of Pictou
Nova Scotia, who supplied it to doctors less than four months after Simpson’s
first report. First Canadian physician to use chloroform in surgery was Dr. W.J.
Almon of Halifax, who employed it in February, 1848. On March 22, 1848, Pharmacist
Fraser supplied chloroform used during the birth of his son, Robert.
Morton’s and Jackson’s claims and counterclaims continued before the
United States Congress and abroad. Wells’ proponents fought for his claim
even after his death. Also, in 1849, Crawford Long first published his claim to
priority based on having used ether in March, 1842. The French Academy, unable to
reach another decision, split the Priz Monlyon equally between Jackson and Morton.
The ether controversy continued through the period of the War between the States.
United States government agencies used freely, ignoring Morton’s patent. Crawford
Long continued to present his evidences of claim. Morton’s misfortunes left
him in poverty. Jackson continued to publish pamphlets, making more and more extravagant
claims. To one of these, written by a supposed friend, is attributed the rage followed
by apoplexy that ended Morton’s life in New York. July 15, 1868, Jackson was
to spend the last seven years of his life in the MeLean Asyulum, a department within
Massachusetts General Hospital, where he died, August 28, 1880.
While the world generally ignored the contenders for fame of anesthesia’s
discovery, progress in extending application of the principle of anesthesia, and
search for newer anesthetic agents, went forward rapidly. Dr. John Snow of London,
was the first physician to specialize in anesthesiology. He perfected improved methods
of administration of anesthetics. Benjamin Ward Richardson, another Londoner, introduced
the first successful local anesthesia in the form of an ether spray, in 1867, which
held its favor until the introduction of cocaine, in 1884. Since, research has made
possible progress in anesthesia until today when there is hardly a situation for
which there is not an effective anesthetic. Yet, as Keys wrote, “anesthesia
remains primarily an empirical development. Our ignorance of pain is still appalling.”
And Robinson, pointing to the responsibility of the anesthesiologist, commented:
“Since every case of anesthesia brings the patient to the gates of death,
anesthesia remains the most dangerous specialty in medicine. Eternal vigilance is
the price of safety in anesthesia.”
To whom should final credit go? A dozen decades have not brought the answer. Inconclusive
arguments continue, motivated for the most part by region pride. Long unquestionably
was first to employ anesthesia in patients undergoing surgical operations, but as
Robinson pointed out, “Long’s first use of ether was of importance to
no one except the four or five patients upon whom he used it, and for four years
ether remained unknown and unavailable to the world whose pain it might have eased.”
Of Wells, Keys wrote: “Although Wells had failed to convince the world of
the value of nitrous oxide as an anesthetic agent, he is credited with conceiving
the idea of anesthesia and of publicizing the possibility of its use.” Jackson,
the twisted genius that sought credit for other men’s ideas, no longer has
proponents. Cartwright summed up the question by commenting: “By means of
ether (Morton) brought about the revolution in medicine which he pneumatic physicians
had looked for in vain”; and, “Of one thing there is no possible doubt:
the general acceptance of anesthesia dated from Morton’s successful demonstration
of October 16, 1946…Within a year, hardly an operation was performed throughout
the civilized world without the use of ether…”
To Long, Wells, Morton, Simpson, and to a host of ethers, the world owes a great
debt of gratitude. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes gave appropriate recognition on behalf
of all mankind when he wrote: “By this priceless gift to humanity, the fierce
extremity of suffering has been steeped in the water of forgetfulness; and the deepest
furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed forever.”
REFERENCES
Ackerknecht, E.H., unpublished monograph.
Ackerknecht, E.H., A Short History of Medicine, New York, Ronald Press Co., 1955.
Archer, W. Harry, Life and Letters of Horace Wells, Discoverer of Anesthesia. Journal
American College of Dentists, Vol.11, No.2, June, 1944; and Vol.12, No.2, June 1945.
Beecher, H.K., and Ford. C., Some New Letters of Horace Wells Concerning on Historic
Partnership, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol.9, No.1,
January, 1954.
Beecher, H.K., and Ford, C., Nathan P. Bice’s “Trials of a Public Benefactor.”
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol.15, No.2, April, 1960.
Boland, Frank: The First Anesthesia. Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press,
1950.
Camac, C.N.B: Epoch-Making Contributions to Medicine, Surgery, and the Allied Sciences.
Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Co., 1909.
Cartwright, F.F: The English Pioneers of Anesthesia, Bristol, John Wright &
Sons, Ltd., 1952.
Fifty Years of Pharmacy in Nova Scotia. Halifax, 1925.
Flexner, James T., Doctors on Horseback. New York. The Viking Press, 1937.
Ford, William W., William Thomas Green Morton: More Books. Vol.21, No.8, October,
1946, Boston Public Library.
Fuller, R.C: The First Authentic Record of the Use of Chloroform on This Side of
the Atlantic, Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, Vol.58, 118, October, 1923.
Hurwitz, Alfred, and Degenshein, George A: Milestones in Modern Surgery. New York,
Hoeber-Harper, 1958.
Keys, Thomas E., The History of Surgical Anesthesia. New York, Schuman’s,
1945.
Major Ralph, H: A History of Medicine, Vol.2, Springfield, Illinois, Charles C.
Thomas, 1954.
Redman, Kenneth: Some Memorials on Crawford W. Long. The First Performer of an Ether
Anesthesia. The South Dakota Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vol.11, No.2, February,
1959.
Fobinson, Victor: Victory Over Pain, New York, Henry Schuman, 1946.
Taylor, Frances Long: Craford W. Long and the Discovery of Ether Anesthesia. New
York, Paul B. Hoeber, 1928.
Thorward, Jurgen: The Century of a Surgeon. New York, Pantheon Books, 1956.
Wilson, R.C: Drugs and Pharmacy in the Life of Georgia. Athens, Georgia, University
of Georgia Press, 1959.
THE PICTURE
Before a skeptical group of surgeons in the operating amphitheatre of Massachusetts
General Hospital, October 16, 1846, William T.G. Morton, Boston dentist, prepared
to anesthetize Dr. John C Morton, Boston dentist, Gilbert Abbott, by causing him
to inhale ether. Though Crawford W. Long, Georgia Physician, had used ether for
anesthesia in 1842, and Horace Wells, Connecticut dentist, tried unsuccessfully
to demonstrate anesthesia with nitrous oxide in 1845, reports of painless operations
resulting from Morton’s methods gave practical anesthesia to mankind. Within
a year, ether was being used world-wide to conquer pain incident to surgical operations.
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