a favorable turn in the interval, or that the anticipated horrors of the
operation would become less appalling by reflection upon them, but simply
because it was so probable that the operation would be followed by a fatal
issue that I wished to prepare for death and what lies beyond it, whilst my
faculties were clear and my emotions comparatively undisturbed.
The morning of the operation arrived. The operation was a more tedious
one than some which involve greater mutilation. It involved cruel cutting
through inflamed and morbidly sensitive parts, and could not be despatched
by a few strokes of the knife. . . Of the agony it occasioned I will say
nothing. Suffering as great as I underwent cannot be expressed in words,
and thus, fortunately, cannot be recalled. The particular pangs are now
forgotten ; but the blank whirlwind of emotion, the horror of great dark-
ness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, bordering close upon
despair, which swept through my mind and overwhelmed my heart, I can
never forget, however gladly I would do so. Only the wish to save others
some of my sufferings makes me deliberately recall and confess the anguish
and humiliation of such a personal experience ; nor can I find language
more sober and familiar than that I have used to express feelings which,
happily for us all, are too rare as matters of general experience to have
shaped into household words. During the operation, in spite of the pain,
my senses were preternaturally acute. ... I watched all that the
surgeon did with a facinated intensity. I still recall with unwelcome
vividness the spreading out of the instruments, the twisting of the tourni-
quet, the first incision, the fingering of the sawed bone, the sponge pressed
on the flap, the tying of the blood vessels, the stitching of the skin, and
the bloody dismembered limb lying on the floor. These are not pleasant
* Semi-centennial of Anesthesia, Massachusetts General Hospital, Octo-
ber 16, 1896.
ETHER, 1846 595
remembrances. For a long time they haunted me, and, though they cannot
bring back the suffering, they can occasion a suffering of their own,
and be the cause of a disquiet which favors neither mental nor bodily
health."
Opium and alcohol were the two agents most commonly
used in the days immediately preceding the introduction of
ether. Dorsey and Warren gave laudanum, and Mott says,
"I was in the habit of giving opiates freely before the intro-
duction of anaesthetics, both before and after operations.
Opium and its preparations are the only anodynes well adapted
for surgical use. No substitutes are worthy of confidence."
Physick followed Richerand's suggestion, and employed alco-
hol, pushed to the point of intoxication. The earliest period
at which ether is distinctly mentioned under that name is by
Godfrey in the "Transactions of the Royal Society" for 1730.
The first scientific account of the employment of hypnotic
anaesthesia for surgical purposes is given by Recamier and
Baron de Potel about 1821. Hypnotism was recommended
by Cloguet in 1829, who removed a cancer of the breast,
without pain to the patient, by its use.
Previous to the discovery of ether anaesthesia, inhalations
of various vapors had often been employed, particularly for
the amelioration of pulmonary affections. Inhalers had been
used by Mudge, Gairdner, Darwin, Beddoes and Watt.
Charles Scuddamore advocated the inhalation of iodine and
conium in phthisis, and Sigmond speaks of the inhalation of
stramonium. The inhalation of ether itself was advocated for
phthisis and asthma, accompanied commonly by the statement
that its use was attended with much danger, and always with
much uncertainty. Anthony Todd Thomson, in the "London
Dispensatory" of 1818, gives the following summary of the
knowledge then extant upon the use of ether : "As an anti-
spasmodic, it relieves the paroxysm of spasmodic asthma,
whether it be taken into the stomach, or its vapors only be
596 HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
inhaled into the lungs. Much caution, however, is required in
inhaling the vapor of ether, as the imprudent inspiration of
it has produced lethargic and apoplectic symptoms." In his
"Materia Medica and Therapeutics," printed in 1832, Thom-
son does not mention the inhalation of ether, a significant
fact, showing that its use had no doubt proved too dangerous
and uncertain to warrant giving it a place in an authorita-
tive work.
Nitrous oxide played a conspicuous role in the discovery
of surgical anaesthesia. It calls for some mention here. At
the close of the eighteenth century Sir Humphrey Davy
wrote :* "In one instance when I had a headache from indi-
gestion, it was immediately removed by the effects of a large
dose of gas (nitrous oxide) . . . though it afterwards
returned, but with much less violence. The power of the
immediate operation of the gas in removing intense physical
pain I had a very good opportunity of ascertaining." Then
relating how he relieved intense pain caused by the cutting of
a "wisdom tooth," by the inhalation of three large doses of
nitrous oxide, he concludes : "As nitrous oxide, in its exten-
sive operations, appears capable of destroying physical pain, it
may probably be used with advantage during surgical opera-
tions in which no great effusion of blood takes place."
Again, in 1818, Faraday wrote :§
" When the vapor of ether mixed with common air is inhaled, it pro-
duces effects very similar to these occasioned by nitrous oxide. . . A
stimulating effect is at first perceived in the epiglottis, but soon becomes
very much diminished ; a sensation of fullness is then generally felt
in the head, and a succession of effects similar to those produced by
nitrous oxide . . . It is necessary to use caution in making experi-
ments of this kind. By the imprudent inspiration of ether a gentleman
was thrown into a lethargic state, which continued, with occasional periods
* Proceedings Royal Society, 1799, " Research on Nitrous Oxide Gas,"
p. 566.
§" Journal of Arts and Sciences," No. VTT, vol. IV, p. 158.
ETHER, 1846 597
of intermission, for more than thirty hours, and a great depression of
spirits ; for many days the pulse was so much lowered that considerable
fears were entertained for his life."
Could any suggestion be more pregnant, or thought and
investigation more direct ? Yet they availed nothing for more
than twenty-five years to hospital patients and battlefield mar-
tyrs. True, a few public lecturers like G. S. Colton went
about the country giving popular exhibitions of the amusing
effects produced by the inhalation of nitrous-oxide gas, and
"ether frolics" became a form of entertainment. Here and
there, however, young minds were leaving the paths so deeply
grooved by generations of routinism, refusing to be bound
by the superstition that pain was a punishment from God,
and should be borne with Puritan fortitude.
" Man yields to custom as he bows to fate,
" In all things ruled, — mind, body, and estate ;
"tin pain, in sickness, we for cure apply
" To them we know not, and we know not why." *
If we confine ourselves to those in America who directed
their thoughts to the obliteration of pain, we deal with four
men : — Crawford W. Long, of Georgia, Charles T. Jackson
and William T. G. Morton, of Boston, and Horace Wells, of
Hartford, Connecticut ; and all of them merit our regard. I
do not propose to take part in the bitter old dispute, or dilate
on the partisan claims, harsh denunciations, and undignified
proceedings of that memorable controversy.
Let us recall first the incidents which led up to the great
discovery, rejoicing that in that achievement America repaid
in large part the debt she owed to the science and teachings
of the Old World. In that accomplishment there is honor and
recompense enough for all. If we seem to claim a large share
of honor for our Alma Mater, let it be remembered that the
* Crabbe : " The Gentleman Farmer."
598 HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
scene of the discovery's birth was the Massachusetts General
Hospital, then, as today, under the supervision of Harvard
teachers; that it was the Hospital's conservative senior sur-
geon, a Harvard professor, who courageously risked damage
to his great reputation in acting sponsor for a drug the nature
of which was then unknown to him; that a junior surgeon,
Henry J. Bigelow, a Harvard teacher present at the demon-
stration, was the first characteristically to give the world an
accurate scientific account* of this new thing so long prayed
for; that one of the principal claimants (Charles T. Jackson)
for the honor of being the discoverer of etherization was grad-
uated from Harvard, while another (W. T. G. Morton) to
whom most writers assign the honor of discoverer, was a stu-
dent in the Harvard School, while making many of his earliest
experiments with ether. So Harvard's record in this ether
business is fittingly linked with that of the introduction into
general use of inoculation, and of vaccination, — three contri-
butions to American science.
To our story : Crawford W. Long was born in Daniels-
ville, Georgia, on November ist, 1815. He was graduated
M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. He first
comes to our notice as a young practitioner of medicine living
in the village of Jefferson, Jackson county, Georgia, in the
year 1842. On a day in that year, a party of merrymakers
indulging in one of the customary "ether frolics," pressed an
unwilling negro lad into service. In this case the joke was
carried too far for the peace of mind of the principals ; and,
taking alarm at the state of unconsciousness produced in the
boy, they hurriedly sent for Long. Details of the treatment
applied are not given, but it is stated that the victim soon
regained consciousness, none the worse for the accident. Soon
* " Insensibility During Surgical Operations Produced by Initiations,"
read before Boston Society for Medical Improvement. Nov. 9, 1846.
ETHER, 1846 599
afterwards the young fellow who administered the ether en-
tered Long's office as a medical student, and there awaited
suitable opportunity to try the effects of ether in a surgical
case. Nothing further transpired so far as the world knew
until 1849, when a paper appeared in the December issue of
the "Southern Medical and Surgical Journal" in which Long
stated that prior to 1846 he had performed five surgical opera-
tions at Jefferson, Georgia, on patients insensible to pain by
means of the administration of sulphuric ether. Those opera-
tions consisted of removing a small encysted tumor, half an
inch in diameter, from the back of the neck (March 30, 1842) ;
a second operation on the same gentleman for another en-
cysted tumor of the neck (June 6, 1842) ; an amputation of
the toe of a negro boy (July 3, 1842) ; removal of a small
encysted tumor of the head (Sept. 9, 1843) : anc ^ the amputa-
tion of a ringer of a negro boy (Jan. 8th, 1845). *Long says :
"The question will no doubt occur, why did I not publish
the results of my experiments in etherization soon after they
were made? I was anxious before making my publication
to try etherization in a sufficient number of cases to fully
satisfy my mind that anaesthesia was produced by the ether,
and was not the effect of the imagination, or owing to any
peculiar insusceptibility to pain in the persons experimented
on. ... I determined to wait . . . and see whether
any surgeon would present a claim to having used ether by
inhalation in surgical operations prior to the time it was used
by me." Long's account seems to show that he failed to
appreciate the immense significance of his experiment, and
that it lacked demonstration of certainty and safety, and even
completeness of anaesthesia by the agent used.
Long presented his claim to be the discoverer of painless
* R. M. Hodges, M. D. "A Narrative of Events connected with the
introduction of Sulphuric Ether into Surgical Use," p. 116.
600 HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
surgery at a meeting of the Georgia Medical Society in 1852,
and the claim was vigorously championed by J. Marion Sims
in the "Virginia Medical Monthly," May, 1877. Little if any
evidence ever was produced to show that Long's early ven-
tures were in any way a benefit to science or humanity, and
certainly the world in no way appeared to be advantaged by
his work.
On December 10th, 1844, G. S. Colton went to Hartford,
Connecticut for an exhibition of the amusing effects produced
by the inhalation of nitrous oxide. Some few of his specta-
tors asked for a private exhibition, which was given on the
following clay. At this seance one of his audience (Samuel
A. Cooley) while under the influence of the gas had his knees
badly injured by running against furniture. Of this he was
totally unconscious, and experienced no pain.
In that gathering was Horace Wells, a dentist, who had
practiced in Boston as the partner of W. T. G. Morton. To
Wells this experiment with nitrous oxide meant much. In
it he saw a principle which in time should mean a new era in
tooth-pulling. He asked Colton to fill his bag with the gas
and go with him to his (Wells's) office, where he would sub-
mit himself to the experiment of extracting a tooth while
under the influence of the gas. Colton agreed. A brother
dentist, John M. Riggs, extracted an upper molar tooth from
Wells, who exclaimed, as the effects of the gas passed off,
"It is the greatest discovery ever made; I did not feel it so
much as the prick of a pin."
Wells repeated the experiment on others with great success.
He became enthusiastic, and, placing his business in the hands
of a friend, went to Boston and sought an introduction to
J. C. Warren. This was in January, 1845. Warren con-
sented to a public trial at the Massachusetts General Hospital
of nitrous oxide as an agent in producing painless dentistry.
The test was made, "but not with such success as to command
ETHER, 1846 601
attention." An advance had been begun, however, and had
Wells been a little more patient before rushing to the public
with an imperfect appliance, the final discovery of anaesthesia
undoubtedly would have been credited to him. He had the
principle, but not the experience and skill. He returned to
Hartford discouraged, convinced that his dream could not be
realized. Before the close of the year he abandoned dentistry,
and sailed for Europe on other business.
Thus far there is nothing to show that Wells had made
any new discovery ; nothing to indicate that he had ever
considered the employment of sulphuric ether as a surgical
or dental anaesthetic. On the contrary, it is clearly proven
that his attempt to apply Davy's suggestion of 18 18 had
failed; that from the time of his failure at the public demon-
stration in January, 1846, at the Massachusetts General Hos-
pital, he made no efforts to remedy his failure. During the
nine months intervening between Wells's failure and Mor-
ton's success in the search for an anaesthetic, these two former
partners were occasionally seeing each other, and there is
reason to believe that Wells knew of Morton's experiments.
On October 19th, three days after Morton's first demonstra-
tion of the value of sulphuric ether, he wrote to his friend
Wells. That letter and its immediate answer state the true
conditions as to the relative rights of these two men to the
honor of being the discoverer. Avarice, passion, jealousy, de-
ceit had not yet entered into the question. Here are the let-
ters :
" Boston, Oct. 19. 1846.
"Friend Wells:
" Dr Sir: I write to inform you that I have discovered a preparation
by inhaling which a person is thrown into sound sleep. The time required
to produce sleep is only a few moments and the time in which persons
remain asleep can be regulated at pleasure. While in this state the severest
surgical or dental operations may be performed, the patient not experi-
encing the slightest pain. I have patented it and am now about sending
out agents to dispose of the right to use it. I will dispose of a right to
602 HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
an individual to use it in his own practice alone or for a town, country
or state. My object in writing you is to know if you would not like to
visit New York and the other cities and dispose of rights upon shares.
I have used the compound in more than one hundred & sixty (sic) cases
in extracting teeth and I have been invited to administer to patients in
the Massachusetts Gen Hospital and have succeeded in every case. The
Professors Warren & Heyward have given me written certificates to this
effect. I have administered it at the Hospital in the presence of the
students and physicians, the room for operations being as full as possible.
For further particulars I will refer you to extracts from the daily Jour-
nals of this city which I forward to you
" Respecty yours
" Wm. T. G. Morton."
"Hartford, Conn., Oct. 20, 1846."
"Dr. Morton: Dear Sir: Your letter, dated yesterday, is just received;
and I hasten to answer it, for fear you will adopt a method in disposing
of your rights which will defeat your object. Before you make any
arrangements whatever, I wish to see you. I think I will be in Boston
the first of next week, probably Monday night. If the operation of admin-
istering the gas is not attended with too much trouble, and will produce
the effect you stale, it will undoubtedly be a fortune to you; provided it is
rightly managed.
" Yours in haste,
"H. Wells."
Such letters stamp the two men.
Wells went on making preparations to leave the country,
in the meantime giving his attention to patent shower-baths,
picture selling, etc. He left behind for Morton the following
letter, however, which fails to mention that he had discovered
anything other than a principle, a fact we cannot afford to
overlook :
"Hartford, Dec. 10, 1846."
"Dear Sir: Have just seen a copy of your claim and find that it is
nothing more than what I can prove priority of discovery by at least 18
months. When in Boston at your room I was well satisfied that the
principal ingredient was ether, and to all appearances it had just the
effect of this alone upon the patient to whom I saw it administered in
your office, yet as you claimed it to be a compound. I supposed it must
be so. Now Dr I do not think I have been treated with fairness in
this matter, I spent my time and money to introduce this invention to the
public nearly two years since, as soon as Dr. Jackson finds that the prin-
ETHER, 1846 603
ciple is as I represented when in Boston, it is immediately patented. You
doubtless remember what I said to the medical class when I addressed
them in Boston nearly 2 years since which was that my discovery did
not consist in giving any specific article to produce this excitement, but
that it was the fact that when this excitement was produced in any manner
whatever the system became paralysed. I then cited as analagous cases the
man who is drunk, or the man who is much excited by passion does not
suffer pain when wounds are inflicted at the time — Now I do not wish or
expect to make any money out of this invention, nor to cause you to be the
looser, but I have resolved to give a history of its introduction, that 1 may
have what credit belonges to me, although it is in my power to invalidate
your patent by word yet so long as we remain on good terms 1 shall
not aim to do it — At the time 1 commenced using gass I had prepared
to use sulphuric •ether entirely instead of nitrous oxide gas, but Dr. Marcy
advised me to desist from using it as it was more dangerous than nitrous
oxide gas. how far I made use of it I have studiously avoided to say
anything about in my address to the public as I am willing you should be
rewarded for your perseverance in its introduction to general use. At
the same time if I had not used a particle of sulphuric ether I doubt if
you can sustain your patent, inasmuch as the nitrous oxide gas (the effect
of which is identical with that of ether) has been extensively used for
the same purpose.
" It is not at all likely that I shall ever make use of any kind of gass,
nor do I ever expect to receive any compensation for the discovery but
I am fully resolved that the world shall know that I was the first to dis-
cover and make known this great principle when applied to surgical
operations. The principle is this that any kind of stimulating gass when
inhaled so paralyses the system that surgical operations may be performed
without pain, and I shall lay no stress upon any particular kind of stimu-
lant to be used, as there are various kinds which are essentially the same.
" Yours Truly tt
H. Wells.
Wells returned home from Paris in March, 1847. The
world was then alive to the new discovery, and he had already
laid claim to the credit of it. 'This claim was maintained
with vigor. Later, every effort was made to prove that ni-
trous oxide was the equal if not the superior of sulphuric ether
as a surgical anaesthetic, but the latter held its advantage,
and this result contrihuted to Wells's failure in business, to
the unhalancing of his mind, and finally to his untimely death
on January 24, 1848. That was at the age of thirty-three.
«04 HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
after his commission of extraordinary acts which led to his
arrest, but for which he could not be held responsible. Wells's
biographer says that his condition at the time of his death
was "brought about by experimenting on himself to a dan-
gerous extent with the powerful and almost unknown agent
chloroform, of which he had formed the impression that it
was a better agent than nitrous-oxide." Wells was volatile,
ingenious, enterprising and honest ; and doubtless posterity
owes him something of a debt.
More or less associated with Wells were Charles T. Jack-
son and William T. G. Morton. Wells visited Jackson's lab-
oratory when he came to- Boston, and it is known that he con-
versed with Jackson upon the value of different anaesthetics.
Morton, as we know, had been Wells' partner in dentistry,
and had lived in Jackson's house. All this intimacy existed
at the time when each is said to have been considering anaes-
thesia.
Charles Thomas Jackson was born at Plymouth, Massachu-
setts, June 21, 1805, and was graduated from the Harvard
Medical School in 1829. In 1846 Jackson was not unknown
to the public. He had claimed the honor of being the discov-
erer of gun-cotton and the electric telegraph. His tastes were
towards the sciences of chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and
electricity, and he had gained early a national reputation in
all. He was a member of many of the scientific and literary
societies of the country, and had a wide acquaintance among
the savants of the old world. In Boston he was perhaps the
first scientist of his day, and withal was a man much sought
after in the scholarly as well as in the social gatherings of
the town. In 1844 Jackson received the young dentist Mor-
ton as a medical student into his family.
William Thomas Green Morton was tern in Charlton,
Worcester county, Massachusetts, August 9, 18 19. After
receiving a common school education he went to Boston,
- ^^z 7-t^> cS t/Ao&frrn—
ETHER. 1846 605
where he worked as a clerk and salesman in various places of
business. Later he went to Baltimore and studied dentistry
in the College of Dental Surgery. In 1841-42 he began prac-
tice at Farmington, Connecticut. There he met Horace Wells,
an unusually skilful dentist, then living in Hartford. A part-
nership was formed between the two, and they moved to Bos-
ton. This partnership was amicably dissolved the next year
(1843), an d Wells returned to Hartford. Morton next opened
an office at 19 Tremont Street, then an active medical centre,
and in March, 1844, he entered his name as a student of med-
icine in the office of Charles T. Jackson. During the ensuing
summer Morton, with his newly married wife, lived in the
family of his preceptor, fitting himself to enter the Harvard
Medical School, where he matriculated in the autumn of
1844. Morton was never graduated, however, as the neces-
sity for gaining a living from his dental business, together
with the attention he was given to ether anaesthesia, inter-
rupted his medical studies. He was given the honorary de-
gree of M.D. by Washington University, at Baltimore in
1849.
While a student in Jackson's office, Morton had a patient,
a Miss Parrott, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, who wished to
have a sensitive tooth filled. He consulted Jackson, and was
advised by him to apply chloric ether to the gums. Jackson
assured him that he had himself used it as tooth-ache drops