Early experiments with ether
In 1839, William E. Clarke, a young medical student of Rochester, New York, was in the habit of amusing some of his friends, among whom was another student named W. T. G. Morton, by the inhalation of ether. Emboldened by his experiences, in 1842 he is said to have administered ether, by means of a towel, to a young woman named Hobbie, and during the period of insensibility which followed, one of her teeth was extracted by a dentist named Elijah Pope.
J. Marion Sims relates the following incident which he states happened in the year 1839:—“A number of youths in Anderson, South Carolina, were exhilarating themselves one day with the seductive vapour of ether. In their excitement they seized a young negro who was watching their antics, and compelled him to inhale the drug from a handkerchief which they held over his mouth and nose by main force. At first his struggles only added to the amusement of his captors, but they soon ceased as the boy became unconscious, stertorous and apparently dying. After an hour or two of anxiety on the part of the spectators he, however, revived, and was apparently no worse for his alarming experience.”
Long claims to have used ether in 1842
Three years after this incident one of the participators in the affair, named Wilhite, became the pupil of Dr. Crawford W. Long, a physician then practising in Jefferson, Jackson County, Georgia. Both the doctor and his pupils used occasionally to amuse themselves by inhaling ether, and the former often noticed that while thus excited he was insensible to blows and bruises. Wilhite recounted to him his memorable experience with the negro boy; and, in March, 1842, Long is said to have persuaded a patient, on whom he was about to operate for a small encysted tumour, to inhale ether until he was insensible. The patient consented, and the tumour was removed without any pain or accident. This memorable event was simply recorded by Long in his ledger thus:—“James Venable, 1842. Ether and excising tumour, $2.00.” Three months later he removed another tumour from the same patient in a similar way, and also performed three other operations during that year. He is said to have again repeated the experiment in 1843 and 1845, but the district in which he lived was so far removed from contact with the large cities and centres of thought, that the discovery remained unknown and unpublished until long after the anæsthetic properties of ether had been fully proved elsewhere. Long himself admits that he considered ether impracticable owing to the shortness of the anæsthetic state, and he therefore abandoned its use.
Marcy’s experiment
Towards the end of the year 1844, Dr. E. E. Marcy, a surgeon of Hartford, is said to have administered ether to a patient, and to have removed an encysted tumour about the size of a walnut from the scalp.
It is stated that Horace Wells was present at this operation, which was quite successful, but, being warned that ether was dangerous to life, the experimenters abandoned its use in favour of nitrous oxide gas.
Morton’s experiments with ether
In 1846, W. T. G. Morton (referred to previously) who had been in partnership with Wells as a dentist, and assisted him in the unfortunate experiment with nitrous oxide in Boston, now directed his attention to the finding of a more suitable anæsthetic for painless operations in dental surgery. After many unsuccessful attempts with various narcotics, Charles T. Jackson, a chemist of Boston, whose pupil he had been, suggested that he should try sulphuric ether, the properties of which had been known for so long.