For all practical purposes we may limit further consideration of the history of anæsthesia to these three substances, and mainly to the consideration of the introduction and adoption of ether, which displaced nitrous oxide, preceded chloroform, and has held its own to the present day as the anaesthetic in most general use, although in many respects inferior to chloroform. But the glamour of history pertains mostly to ether, because of the peculiar difficulties and incidents attending its production.
For the honor of its discovery there are four claimants:—Crawford W. Long, of Danielsville, Ga.; Charles T. Jackson, of Plymouth, Mass.,—both physicians; Horace Wells, of Hartford, Vt., and William T. G. Morton, of Charleston, Mass.,—both dentists. It is only fair to each of these four men to consider briefly the merits of the claims made for each, while at the same time attributing the final success of the new agent to the happy accidents which permitted Morton to make a public demonstration of its power in the Massachusetts General Hospital, before such eminent men as Warren, Bigelow, and others, by whose influence and reputation the agent was at once received upon its merits. This was on the sixteenth of October, 1846,—a year which deserves to be memorable in the history of medicine.
Crawford Long graduated, in 1839, from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and settled in Jefferson, Georgia, where it seems to have been a common thing to have what was known as "ether frolics," during which the exhilarating effects of the inhalation of the drug were matters of common sport and amusement at various small gatherings. Long himself frequently inhaled the drug and often felt its benumbing effects. It is stated that it finally occurred to him to give it a trial in a surgical operation, and that, in May of 1842, he removed a small tumor from the neck of a patient thus anaesthetized and without any pain. Owing to the sparseness of the population and the lack of dissemination of medical knowledge in those days, no public report was made of these operations, which produced nothing more than local town-talk. A young student of Long's, named Wilhite, kept a negro boy under the influence of ether for some time, to Long's surprise. Long lived one hundred and thirty miles from any railroad, and the first published account of his operations appeared in 1849, which was suggested by an account of Morton's work, which he had read in the editorials of the Medical Examiner for December, 1846. Long died in 1878, the unfortunate controversy in which the four claimants already mentioned participated being not yet concluded. Nevertheless, there is every reason to think that he is entitled to the credit of having first anaesthetized a patient with sulphuric ether for the purpose of producing insensibility to pain.
Horace Wells began the study of dentistry in 1834, in Boston, and later opened an office in Hartford, Connecticut. He seems to have been a young man of great ingenuity, continually making new instruments and devising new experiments. To him is to be credited the first operation ever performed without pain by the use of nitrous-oxide gas. In 1844 a Dr. Colton delivered a lecture in Hartford upon the subject of this gas. A young man who inhaled it, and became excited, ran against some furniture, badly bruising himself, but made no complaint of pain. Wells, noticing this, said to a by-stander that he believed that one, by inhaling a sufficient quantity, could have a tooth extracted or a leg amputated without pain. The following day he inhaled the gas himself and had a tooth extracted by a Dr. Higgs. Wells remained unconscious for a little while, and, on recovering consciousness, cried out: "A new era in tooth-pulling! It did not hurt me as much as the prick of a pin! It is the greatest discovery ever made!"
He at once began the manufacture and use of the gas, which became quite general in that locality. His attention was also called to the action of the vapor of ether, which Dr. Marcy, a physician of Hartford, suggested to him to try as a substitute for gas; but Wells, finding it more difficult to administer, discontinued it and confined himself to the use of nitrous oxide. A month later Dr. Marcy gave ether to a sailor for a small operation, the man feeling no pain. These experiences of Wells and Marcy occurred two years after Long's work with ether, each being in total ignorance of the experiments of the other.
In 1845 Wells visited Boston for the purpose of introducing nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic, and called upon his fellow-dentist and old partner, Morton, among others. He was discouraged, with his lack of success, returned to Hartford, and continued the frequent use of gas for a couple of years longer, but met with no encouragement in introducing it for general surgical purposes, on account of prejudice and fear upon the part of physicians and surgeons. Wells died in January, 1848, a few days before the Medical Society of Paris passed a resolution that to him is due all the honor of having first discovered and successfully applied the use of vapors or gases whereby surgical operations could be performed without pain. There stands to-day in Hartford the monument erected by the city and the State, with the following inscription:—
"Horace Wells, who discovered anæsthesia, November, 1844."
William T. G. Morton was born in 1819, and, after failing in business in Boston, in 1840 went to Baltimore and studied dentistry. In 1841 he entered the office of Horace Wells, above alluded to, as assistant, and in 1842 became his partner, after having introduced a new kind of solder for fixation of artificial teeth to gold plates. In 1843 this partnership was dissolved, Wells moving to Hartford, while Morton, in 1844, entered the office of Dr. C. P. Jackson as a medical student, matriculating in the Harvard School, but never graduating. After Wells's visit to Boston, during which he tried to introduce "laughing gas," Morton and he had numerous interviews, especially with regard to this gas. Morton was not well versed in chemistry, and sought the advice of his medical preceptor, Jackson, with regard to its manufacture. Asking why Morton wished to make it and being told the reason, Jackson suggested the use of' sulphuric ether, just as Marcy had suggested its use to Wells, saying that it was easy to procure, safe in employment, and equally productive of results. He also stated that the students at Cambridge College often inhaled ether for amusement.
