When hypnotism made one of its periodic re-appearances in 1837, this time under the name of mesmerism, after that extraordinary exponent of its powers Mesmer, Simpson recognised in it a possible method for “casting the patient asleep” before operation and set to work to investigate its phenomena. A Frenchman named Du Potet, disheartened by the prejudice against mesmerism in his own country, came to London in 1837, and was fortunate enough to receive the support of Dr. John Elliotson, physician 95 to University College Hospital. Elliotson’s advocacy of the new practice was received with ridicule by the profession, and was treated with such scathing contempt by the Lancet and other journals, that he was completely ruined.
Simpson was very successful in his experiments with mesmerism, conducted on the lines suggested by Elliotson, but he recognised that, after all, it was not the agent for which he was seeking, and dropped his researches.
He did not resume them even when Liston, a few years later, stimulated by the advocacy of the Manchester surgeon Braid, who met with a better reception than Elliotson, and by the relation of a long series of successful cases by a surgeon named Esdaile, in Calcutta, actually performed operations with success on patients brought under its influence.
The first suggestion to produce anæsthesia by the inhalation of drugs was made by Sir Humphry Davy in 1800. He discovered by experiment upon himself that the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas—commonly known as a laughing gas—had the power of relieving toothache and other pains; he described the effect as that of “uneasiness being swallowed up for a few minutes by pleasures.” Although he stopped short at this stage, and does not seem to have used the inhalation to produce actual loss of consciousness, he, nevertheless, forecast the future by suggesting that nitrous oxide might be used as an inhalation in the performance 96 of surgical operations, in which “no great effusion of blood” took place.
Some thirty years later Faraday pointed out that ether had effects upon the nervous system when inhaled, similar to those of laughing-gas. These two drugs came to be inhaled more in jest than in earnest; more as an amusing scientific experiment for the sake of the pleasure-giving excitement they set up, than for the purpose Davy had suggested. Ether, it is true, was recommended even before Davy’s day for the relief of the suffering in asthma, but until the fifth decade of the century no one had attempted to prevent suffering as inflicted by the surgeon or the dentist, by producing the state of unconsciousness brought about by the inhalation of such drugs as ether—a process now known to the world as anæsthesia.
The persons who first made the bold experiments which resulted in the discovery of how to produce anæsthesia were Americans; and two men were prominently concerned in the discovery. Several others made isolated and successful efforts with both ether and nitrous oxide, but they lacked the confidence and the courage to make their success public and to persist in their experiments. Of these, Dr. Long, of Athens, Georgia, was one of the earliest; he is said to have successfully removed a tumour from a patient under the influence of ether in 1842, and in the Southern States he is regarded as the discoverer of anæsthesia. Dr. Jackson, of Boston—a scientific 97 chemist—laid claim to the honour of the discovery after others had fought the fight and established the practice of anæsthesia. Neither of these men, for the reason already given, deserves the honour which is now universally attributed to their fellow-countrymen, Wells and Morton.
Horace Wells was born at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1815, and was educated to the profession of dental surgeon. He gave much attention to the desire present in the minds of many men at that time to render dental operations painless. On December 10, 1844, he witnessed at a popular lecture the experiment of administering laughing-gas, and noticed that a Mr. Cooley, while still under the influence of the gas, struck and injured his limb against a bench without suffering pain. The idea at once occurred to Wells that here was the agent he was in search of, and the very next day he experimented upon himself. If it has ever been fortunate to have toothache it was so for Wells that day; he was troubled by an aching molar which was removed by a colleague named Rigg, whilst he was fully under the influence of nitrous oxide; and thus he began what he himself at once called on recovering consciousness, “a new era in tooth-pulling.” He proceeded promptly to test the experiment upon others and with complete success; and then making his success known, he proceeded with his former pupil Morton to Boston, and gave a public demonstration of his method which unfortunately was so imperfectly 98 carried out that he was laughed at for his pains and stigmatised an impostor. Wells himself stated that the failure was due to the premature withdrawal of the bag containing the gas, so that the patient was but partially under its influence when the tooth was extracted. Wells and Morton were ignominiously hissed by the crowd of practitioners and students gathered to see the operation. Wells never recovered from the disappointment and the illness which resulted, and although he was able to explain his discovery to the French Academy of Science in 1846, he unfortunately died insane in New York two years later. Undoubtedly he was the first to discover the practicability of nitrous oxide anæsthesia, and to proclaim the discovery with a discoverer’s zeal. Although his career ended so sadly, his efforts had, nevertheless, inspired to greater endeavour his colleague Morton, who had not only been associated in his experiments, but had been deeply interested in the subject for many years.
William Thomas Green Morton was born in 1819; his father was a farmer at Charlton, Massachusetts. He qualified as a dentist at Baltimore, and entered into successful practice at Boston. Fired with the same ambition as Wells, he made attempts to extract teeth painlessly with the assistance of drugs administered, or sometimes of hypnotism. In December, 1844, after Wells’s failure with nitrous oxide gas, he wisely abandoned that agent and investigated another which 99 promised better results. He experimented first with a drug known as chloric ether, but failing to get the desired effect, and at the suggestion of the aforementioned Dr. Jackson, he proceeded to investigate the effect of ordinary ether. The first experiments were made on animals, and were so encouraging that he believed he had at last found the desired agent, provided the effect on human beings corresponded with that upon dumb creatures. Boldly and heroically he made the necessary experiment upon himself, and on September 30, 1846, inhaled ether from a handkerchief while shut up in his room and seated in his own operating-chair. He speedily lost consciousness, and in seven or eight minutes awoke in possession of the greatest discovery that had ever been revealed to suffering humanity. We can picture the man gradually awakening in his chair first, to the consciousness of his surroundings and then to the consciousness of his great achievement; sitting with his physical frame excited by the influence of the drug which he had inhaled, and his soul stirred to its deepest depth by the expanding thought of the far-reaching effects of what he had done.
“Twilight came on,” he said, in subsequently relating the event. “The hour had long passed when it was usual for patients to call. I had just resolved to inhale the ether again and have a tooth extracted under its influence, when a feeble ring was heard at the door. Making a motion to one of my assistants 100 who started to answer the bell, I hastened myself to the door, where I found a man with his face bound up, who seemed to be suffering extremely. ‘Doctor,’ said he, ‘I have a dreadful tooth, but it is so sore I cannot summon courage to have it pulled; can’t you mesmerise me?’ I need not say that my heart bounded at this question, and that I found it difficult to control my feelings, but putting a great constraint upon myself I expressed my sympathy, and invited him to walk into the office. I examined the tooth, and in the most encouraging manner told the poor sufferer that I had something better than mesmerism, by means of which I could take out his tooth, without giving him pain. He gladly consented, and saturating my handkerchief with ether I gave it to him to inhale. He became unconscious almost immediately. It was dark. Dr. Haydon held the lamp. My assistants were trembling with excitement, apprehending the usual prolonged scream from the patient, while I extracted the firmly-rooted bicuspid tooth. I was so much agitated that I came near throwing the instrument out of the window. But now came a terrible reaction. The wrenching of the tooth had failed to rouse him in the slightest degree; he remained still and motionless as if already in the embrace of death. The terrible thought flashed through my mind that he might be dead—that in my zeal to test my new theory, I might have gone too far, and sacrificed a human life. I trembled under the sense of my responsibility to my Maker, and to my 101 fellowmen. I seized a glass of water and dashed it in the man’s face. The result proved most happy. He recovered in a minute, and knew nothing of what had occurred. Seeing us all stand around he appeared bewildered. I instantly, in as calm a tone as I could command, asked, ‘Are you ready to have your tooth extracted?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, in a hesitating voice. ‘It is all over,’ I said, pointing to a decayed tooth on the floor. ‘No,’ he shouted, leaping from his chair. The name of the man who thus for the first time underwent an operation under anæsthesia induced by ether was Eben Frost.”
The nature of the agent used by Morton was kept secret only a short period; the steps he took to bring his discovery before the medical profession would have rendered it difficult if not impossible, even if ether had not a penetrating tell-tale odour. Morton laid his method before one of the surgical staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, the same institution where Wells’s ill-managed demonstration had taken place two years before; he requested, with complete confidence, to be allowed to exhibit the powers of his agent. The surgeon was sceptical, but wisely consented, after having satisfied himself that there was no risk to life. A patient suffering from a tumour was chosen, and readily consented to act as a subject for demonstration. A large crowd of professional men and students assembled in the surgical theatre on the morning of October 16, 1846, the day chosen for the trial. 102 The senior hospital surgeon, Dr. J. Collins Warren, was to perform the operation. The spectators, many of whom no doubt recollected the failure with laughing-gas, were disposed to deride when the appointed hour passed and Morton did not appear; but the delay was due only to the desire of the dentist to bring a proper inhaler, and although the crowd received him with a chilling reserve, and the occasion was one fit to try the nerve of the strongest, Morton did not lose his presence of mind. He promptly anæsthetised the patient, and as unconcernedly as does the modern administrator, nodded to the surgeon that the patient was ready. From the first moment that the knife touched the patient, until the operation was concluded, no sound, no movement indicated that he was suffering. The men who had scoffed once and had come, even the surgeon himself, prepared to scoff again, realised the success and the wonder of it, and remained to admire. “Gentlemen, this is no humbug,” exclaimed Dr. Warren, as he finished his handiwork. When the patient recovered he was questioned again and again, but stoutly maintained that he had felt no pain—absolutely none. “Gilbert Abbott, aged twenty, painter, single,” was the description of the man on whom was performed the first surgical operation under the influence of ether.