THE DISCOVERY OF SURGICAL ANESTHESIA

Dr. William T. G. Morton's Own Account.

THIS is from "Memoranda Relating to the Discovery of Surgical Anesthesia and Dr. William T. G. Morton's Relations to this Event," written by his son, William James Morton, M. D. and printed in the "Post Graduate" for April, 1905. Antedating his great discovery of 1846, Dr. Morton devised a new solder by which teeth could be attached to gold plates, and further contrived to obviate dependence upon old fangs in inserting new teeth. Their removal was traditionally attended with pain.

It was while working with Dr. C. T. Jackson, who also claimed the honor of the discovery, which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes christened anesthesia, that Dr. Morton first used ether, or "letheon." Jackson subsequently accepted the Montyon prize of the French Academy, which Morton declined to share, the result being that in 1852 Morton received the large gold medal, the Montyon prize in medicine and surgery. His life was spent in contests, literary and legal, over his discovery.

IN November, 1844, Dr. Morton entered the Harvard Medical School in Boston in a regular course as a matriculate and attended lectures for two years, expecting soon to receive his full degree. While pursuing his studies and practicing dentistry at the same time as a means of earning the money necessary to continue them, his attention was drawn vividly to the pain attending certain severe dental operations. The suffering involved made a deep impression upon his mind and he set about to discover some means to alleviate it.

He read in his textbooks extensively upon the subject, and finally began a series of experiments upon insects, fish, dogs, and lastly upon himself. Satisfied that his favorite spaniel, "Nig," had not been harmed by the inhalation of sulphuric ether vapor, even subsequent to a state of complete unconsciousness, he determined to inhale the ether himself. In his memoir to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Paris, presented by M. Arago, in the autumn of 1847, he thus describes the experiment, and his next almost immediate experiment upon a patient:

"Taking the tube and flask, I shut myself up in my room, seated myself in the operating chair, and commenced inhaling. I found the ether so strong that it partially suffocated me, but produced no decided effect. I then saturated my handkerchief and inhaled it from that. I looked at my watch and soon lost consciousness. As I recovered, I felt a numbness in my limbs, with a sensation like nightmare, and would have given the world for some one to come and arouse me. I thought for a moment I should die in that state, and the world would only pity or ridicule my folly. At length I felt a slight tingling of the blood in the end of my third finger, and made an effort to touch it with my thumb, but without success. At a second effort, I touched it, but there seemed to be no sensation. I gradually raised my arm and pinched my thigh but I could see that sensation was imperfect. I attempted to rise from my chair, but fell back. Gradually I regained power over my limbs and found that I had been insensible between seven and eight minutes.

"Delighted with the success of this experiment, I immediately announced the result to the persons employed in my establishment, and waited impatiently for some one upon whom I could make a fuller trial. Toward evening, a man residing in Boston came in, suffering great pain, and wishing to have a tooth extracted. He was afraid of the operation, and asked if he could be mesmerized. I told him I had something better, and saturating my handkerchief, gave it to him to inhale. He became unconscious almost immediately. It was dark, and Dr. Hayden held the lamp while I extracted a firmly-rooted bicuspid tooth. There was not much alteration in the pulse and no relaxing of the muscles. He recovered in a minute and knew nothing of what had been done for him. He remained for some time talking about the experiment. This was on the 30th of September, 1846."

The first public notice of this event appeared in the Boston "Daily Journal" of October 1, 1846, in the following terms :

"Last evening, as we were informed by a gentleman who witnessed the operation, an ulcerated tooth was extracted from the mouth of an individual without giving him the slightest pain. He was put into a kind of sleep, by inhaling a preparation, the effects of which lasted for about three-quarters of a minute, just long enough to extract the tooth."

This publication induced the eminent surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, to visit Dr. Morton's office, and he was present at a large number of successful inhalations of ether vapor by the new method in which teeth were extracted without pain. So impressed was he with the magnitude of the event and the perfection of the method of anesthetic inhalation in Morton's hands, that he at once warmly espoused Morton's desire to make public demonstration of his method. Largely through his instrumentality, permission was secured from Dr. John C. Warren, senior surgeon of the Massachusetts General Hospital, to make trial of the new method, and on October 16, 1846, at this hospital, occurred the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia, in the presence of the surgical and medical staffs in an amphitheater crowded to overflowing with students and physicians.

The trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital, quickly following the public demonstration of October, 1846, made a report according the honor and credit of the discovery to Dr. Morton, and presented him with a silver box containing $ 1,000, "In honor of the ether discovery of September 30, 1846," adding the further inscription, "He has become poor in a cause which has made the world his debtor." Later on Dr. Morton received a divided Montyon prize from the French Academy of Sciences, the "Cross of the Order of Wasa, Sweden and Norway," and the "Cross of the Order of St. Vladimir, Russia." In the public gardens of Boston, Massachusetts, a monument was erected to "commemorate the discovery that the inhalation of ether causes insensibility to pain." The inscription continues, "First proved to the world at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, October, 1846." Dr. Morton's deed, though not his name, is thus honored. Yet another monument stands over Dr. Morton's grave in Mt. Auburn Cemetery near Boston, "erected by citizens of Boston," bearing the following inscription written by the late Dr. Jacob Bigelow: "William T. G. Morton, inventor and revealer of anesthetic inhalation, before whom, in all time, surgery was agony, by whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled, since whom science has control of pain."

On the outside walls of the new Public Library in Boston are memorial tablets with about 500 names of writers, artists, and scientists. Here Boston inscribed Dr. Morton's name. A still more eloquent expression of the gratitude of Massachusetts is the inscription of Dr. Morton's name upon the base of the dome in the new chamber of the House of Representatives in the State House in Boston, among the selected 53 of Massachusetts' most famous citizens "Names selected," as stated at the time of the event, "in such a way that they shall either mark an epoch, or designate a man who has turned the course of events." The following names will indicate the general trend of the selection : Morse, Morton, Bell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, Edwards, Channing, Endicott, Winthrop, John Adams, J. Q. Adams, Webster, Sumner, Choate, Everett, Bowditch and others.