William T. G. Morton, M.D. -- Sulphuric ether. 1852 : Referred to a select committee : Dr. William H. Bissell, of Illinois, chairman : The select committee to whom was referred the memorial of Dr. William T.G. Morton, asking remuneration from Congress for the discovery of the anaesthetic or pain-subduing properties of sulphuric ether.

Date:: [1852]

Credit: William T. G. Morton, M.D. -- Sulphuric ether. 1852 : Referred to a select committee : Dr. William H. Bissell, of Illinois, chairman : The select committee to whom was referred the memorial of Dr. William T.G. Morton, asking remuneration from Congress for the discovery of the anaesthetic or pain-subduing properties of sulphuric ether. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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tious Airs published at Bristol, England, in 1796. The same work con- tains a letter from one of Dr. Thornton's patients, giving an account ol his use of ether, by Dr. Thornton's advice, in a case oi pectoral catarrh. He says it gave almost immediate relief both to the oppression and pain ib the chest. On the second trial he inhaled two spoonsful), with immediate relief as before, and I very soon after/e// asleep. In 1815, Nysten, in the Dictionary of Medical Sciences, speaks of the inhalation of ether as familiarly known for mitigating pains in colic. For the last fifty years most therapeutic authors mention its use by inhalation in asthma, &c., as Duncan, Murray, Brande, ChriStison, Pereira, Thompson, Barbier, Wendt, Vogt, Sundelin, &c. Effects analogous to intoxication, when ether is inhaled, are stated by American authors, as Godman, (1822,) Mitchel, (1832,) Professor Samuel Jackson, (1833,) Wood & Bache, (1834,) Miller, (1846, and early in that year.) Dr.' John C. Warren, in his work on Etherization, says: The general properties of ether have been known for more than a century, and the effect of its inhalation, in producing exhiliration and insensibility, has been understood for many years, not only by the scientific, but by young men in colleges and schools, and in the shop of the apothecary, who have frequently employed it for these purposes. About a half a century since. Sir Humphrey Davy, who had acted as an assistant to Dr. Beddoes, in the commencement of his career, sug- gested the possibility that a pain-subduing gas might be inhaled, as fol- lows: As nitrous oxide, in its extensive operation, appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advantage dur- ing surgical operations in Which no great effusion of blood takes place. Researches on Nitrous Oxide, p. 556. Upon this hint, Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, in the autumn of the year 1844, experimented with nitrous oxide gas, in the extraction of teeth; but this gas being found on trial to be unavailable for the desired purposes, he abandoned his experiments in December, 1844, and tried none afterwards. Late in the autumn of 1844, Dr. E. E. Marcy, of Hartford, Conn., as appears from his own p,fiidavit and that of F. C. Goodrich, of Hartford, suggested to Dr. Wells to substitute sulphuric ether for nitrous oxide, and informed him of its known effects, and how to make it. Marcy administered the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether in my [his] office to a young man; * * * and after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head an encysted tumor of about the size of an Eng- lish walnut. The operation was entirely unattended with pain. Dr. Marcy concluded that nitrous oxide was more safe, equally efficacious, and more easily administered than ether, and therefore to be preferred, and retained that opinion to December, 1849. Dr. E. R. Smilie, of Boston, in October, 1846, asserted that he had employed successfully an etherial tincture of opium to subdue pain under the knife. He states that he applied this tincture by inhalation in the spring of 1844 ; that he opened a serious abscess on the neck of the late Mr. John Johnson, while he was rendered unconscious of pain from the operation by this tincture. The Paris Medical Gazette, of March, 1846, gives an account of re- markable experiments performed by M. Duces, by ether, on animals, ex- hibiting most of the phenomena since witnessed in the human body. Sir Benjamin Brodie tried it on Guinea pigs, whom it put to sleeps and killed. He doubted its safety.

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