[Report in regard to the discovery of anaesthesia].

  • United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Anaesthesia.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report in regard to the discovery of anaesthesia]. 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.

    1/42
    32d Congress, 2d Session. [SENATE.] Rep. Com. No. 421. IN SENATE OF THE UNITED SENATE. Fbbrtjari 19, 1853—Ordered to be printed. Mr. Walker made the following REPORT: (To accompany an amendment intended to be proposed to the act (H. R. 336) making appropriation for the support of the army for the year ending June 30, 1854. ] The select committee, to which were referred the various memorials in regard to the discovery of the means by which the human body is rendered uniformly and safely insensible to pain under surgi- cal operations, has had the subject under consideration, and now report: That in the opinion of the committee such a discovery has been made, and tiiat the credit and honor of the discovery belong to one of the following persons, all citizens of the United States, to wit: William T. G. Morton, Horace Wells, deceased, or Charles T. Jackson ; but to which of these persons in particular the dis- covery should be awarded, the committee is not unanimous, and consequently the committee is of opinion that this point should not be settled by Congress without a judicial inquiry. But the committee has no hesitancy in saying, that to the man who has bestowed this boon upon mankind, when he shall be cer- tainly made knovvn, the highest honor and reward are due which it is compatible with the institutions of our country to bestow. The means of safely producing insensibility to pain in surgical and kindred operations have been the great desideratum in the curative art from the earliest period of medical science, and have been zealously sought for during a period of more than a thou- sand years. At various periods, and in various ages, hope has been excited in the human breast that this great agent had been found; but all proved delusive, and hope as often died away, un- til the discovery now under consideration burst upon the world from our own country, and in our own day. Then, and not until then, was the time-cherished hope realized that the knife would lose its sting, and that blood might follow its edge without pain. But for the committee to dilate upon the importance of this discovery were futile indeed. The father or mother who has seen a child, or the child who has a father or mother, upon the surgeon's table, writhing and shrieking from pain and agony— the husband who has seen his wife suffering, perhaps dying, un-