Report to the House of representatives of the United States of America : vindicating the rights of Charles T. Jackson to the discovery of the anaesthetic effects of ether vapor, and disproving the claims of W.T.G. Morton to that discovery. Presented ... on the 28th of August, 1852 / By Hon. Edward Stanly ... and Hon. Alexander Evans ... members of the select committee on the ether discovery. Printed by authority of the minority of the committee.
- Edward Stanly
- Date:
- [1852?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report to the House of representatives of the United States of America : vindicating the rights of Charles T. Jackson to the discovery of the anaesthetic effects of ether vapor, and disproving the claims of W.T.G. Morton to that discovery. Presented ... on the 28th of August, 1852 / By Hon. Edward Stanly ... and Hon. Alexander Evans ... members of the select committee on the ether discovery. Printed by authority of the minority of the committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
![Wells's friends for the nitrons oxide, as administered by him in the winter of ] S44-'5. Hon. Mr. Dixon (now United States senator from Connecticut) testifies that, having seen the correspondence published among Dr. Morton's papers, he ap- plied to Dr. Wells for an explanation of it. That explanation will be found iu the testimony of Mr. Dixon, and may be disposed of with the remark that it is evidently unsatisfactory on the face of it. The point for which that testi- mony is now referred to is simply to show that Dr. Wells admitted tile genu- ineness of the correspondence, as hereinbefore quoted, from A an examination of the question of anaesthesia, arising on the memorial of Charles Thomas Wells, representative of Horace Wells, which your committee have carefully examined. How, then, can the letter of Dr. Wells of October 20, 1846, be reconciled with the pretensions now put forth for him? The letter of Dr. Morton, to which it is a reply, distinctly claims as his dis- covery (then recently made) the very fact which, on behalf of Dr. Wells, as before quoted, is claimed to be the whole discovery, and the only discovery of any worth or value, viz: the fact of the actual effective application of some one or more of a class of agents to the purpose of producing insensibility to pain under surgical operations, with safety to the subject of them. According to the proposition on behalf of Wells, (and his whole case depends absolutely upon its admission,) the particular agent used is unimportant to the discovery—the discovery being the truth that such insensibility was produced by one or more agents of a class of agents. But it is simply the result—the fact of insensibility to pain—which Dr. Morton claims in that letter to have discovered as producible by something which he does not describe or disclose. Can it be disputed that this was a direct claim, advanced by Dr. Morton to Dr. Wrlls himself, of the whole body of the discovery which is now claimed fi ir Wells ? And can it be doubted that if that discovery, or anything like it, was then the property of Wells, his reply must have referred to it, if it did not effectually guard his right? Yet Dr. Wells says: If the operation of administering the gas is not attended with too much trouble, and will produce the effect you state, it will undoubtedly be a fortune to you, provided it be rightly managed. Then why, it may be asked, if nitrous oxide, which is easily administered, produced precisely the same effect, was it not a fortune to Dr. Wells 1 Not, certainly, for want of skill in the management of a discovery so as to make the most of it, for he fears Dr. Morton will adopt an injudicious method in disposing of his rights, against which Dr. Wells intimates he can guard him. And bis conversation with R. H. Eddy, at the time of his visit to Boston, is in keeping with the letter, and shows very clearly that he thought a patent ought to be applied for, whether the subject was practicable or not, and that sales of rights should be made pending the application for the patent. This may be all well, but it did not prove him a novice in these matters. Mr. Eddy's statement is as follows: Boston, February 17, 1847. Dear Sie : In reply to your note of this morning I have to state that, about the time I was engaged in preparing the papers for the procural of the patent in the United States on the discovery of Doctor Morton for preventing pain in surgical operations by the inhalation of the vapor of sulphuric ether, I was re- quested by Doctor Morton to call at his office to have an interview with the late Doctor Horace Wells, who was then on a visit to this city, and who, Doctor Morton thought, might be able to render him valuable advice and assistance in regard to the mode of disposing of privileges to use the discovery. Accordingly, I had an interview with Doctor Wells. During such meeting, we conversed freely on the discovery and in relation to the experiments Doctor Wells had](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21002551_0168.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
