"First, that Dr. Horace Wells did not make any discovery of the anesthetic properties of the vapor of ether which he himself considered reliable and which he thought proper to give to the world. That his experiments were confined to nitrous oxide, but did not show it to be an efficient and reliable anesthetic agent....
"Second, that Dr. Charles T. Jackson does not appear at any time to have made any discovery in regard to ether which was not in print in Great Britain some years before.
"Fifth, that the whole agency of Dr. Jackson in the matter appears to consist entirely in his having made certain suggestions to aid Dr. Morton to make the discovery."
In 1873, Jackson's mind gave way, and after seven years of confinement in an asylum he died in 1880, at the age of 75, having been the recipient of many honors from foreign potentates and learned societies.
William T. G. Morton was born in Charleston, Mass., in 1819. After a disastrous experience in business he was sent to Baltimore in 1840 and began the study of dentistry. In 1841 he entered the dental office of Horace Wells as student and assistant, becoming a partner in 1842. In 1843 partnership was dissolved, Wells removing to Hartford, as before stated. Morton, ambitious for a medical degree, entered his name as a student in the office of Charles T. Jackson, in 1844, and the same year matriculated in the Harvard Medical School, though he never graduated. Having learned through Wells of the latter's successful use of nitrous oxide gas, but not knowing how to make it, he sought the advice of Dr. Jackson, who informed him that its preparation entailed considerable difficulty, and inquired for what purpose he wanted it. On Morton's replying that he wished to use it to make patients insensible to pain, Jackson suggested the use of sulphuric ether, as Marcey had suggested it to Wells two years previously, saying that it would produce the same effect and did not require any apparatus. Jackson also told Morton of the ether frolics common at Cambridge among the students. That same evening, September 30, 1846, Morton administered ether to a patient and extracted a tooth for him without pain. The next day he visited the office of a patent lawyer, for the purpose of securing a patent upon the new discovery. This lawyer ascertained that Jackson had been intimately connected with its suggestion, and came to the conclusion that a patent could not safely issue to either one independently of the other. But Jackson being a member of the State Medical Society, against whose ethical code it is to patent discoveries that pertain to the welfare of patients, and fearing the censure of his colleagues, agreed at once to assign his right over to Morton, receiving in return a 10 per cent. commission upon all that the latter made out of it. Morton, as a dentist, having no more compunction then than dentists have now upon the securement of a patent,—in other words, being actuated by no fine ethical scruples,—secured the patent, and then called upon Dr. J. Mason Warren, one of the surgeons in the Massachusetts General Hospital. Warren promised his coöperation and appointed the 16th of October, 1846, for the first public trial. Upon this occasion the clinic room was filled with visitors and students, when Morton placed the young man under the influence of his "letheon," as he called it then; after which Warren removed a tumor from his neck. The trial was most successful. Another took place on the following day, and on November 7th an amputation and an excision of the jaw were made, both patients being under the influence of letheon and oblivious to pain. At this time the nature of the anesthetic agent was kept a secret, the vapor of ether being disguised by aromatics, so as not to be recognized by anyone present.
True to the highest traditions of their craft, the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital now met and declined to make further use of a drug whose composition was thus kept secret. It was then that Morton revealed the exact nature of it as sulphuric ether, disguised with aromatic oils. In a report made by the commissioner of patents, it was set forth that:
"For many years it had been known that the vapor of sulphuric ether, when freely inhaled, would intoxicate as does alcohol when taken into the stomach, but that the former was much more temporary in its effects. But notwithstanding the records of its effects to this extent, which were familiar to so many, no surgeon had ever attempted to substitute it for the palliatives in common use previous to surgical operations. That, in view of these and other considerations, a patent had been granted for the discovery."
In 1846 an English patent was obtained.
Morton soon began the attempt to sell office rights, as do the dentists of to-day, while the medical profession was then, as ever, antagonistic to patents, holding them to be subversive of general good. His patent was soon opposed and then generally infringed upon. Litigation followed without end, and the government stultified itself by refusing to recognize the validity of the patent issued by itself. And so, without any compensation to the discoverer, ether soon came into general use in this country as abroad. While receiving many congratulations from friends and humanitarians, Morton's success aroused the jealousy of some of his professional brethren, among them one Dr. Flagg, who commenced a terrible onslaught upon the new application of ether and its promoter. By his machinations a meeting of Boston dentists was called and a committee of twelve appointed to make a formal protest against anesthesia. This committee published a manifesto in the Boston Daily Advertiser, in which all sorts of untoward effects and unpleasant results were attributed to the new anesthetic. This proclamation was spread broadcast, and did Morton, for the time, very much harm. Equally obstreperous was Dr. Westcott, connected with the Dental College in Baltimore. He made fun of Morton's "sucking bottles," as his inhalers were dubbed; and in various of the medical and secular journals of the day, bitter, often foolish and absurd, attacks were made. The editors of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal said: