Statements, supported by evidence, of Wm. T.G. Morton, M.D., on his claim to the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of ether : submitted to the honorable the Select Committee appointed by the Senate of the United States, 32d Congress, 2d session, January 21, 1853 / presented by Mr. Davis of Massachusetts, and referred to the Select Committee to whom had been referred the petition of sundry physicians of Boston and vicinity, in support of the claim of W.T.G. Morton, M.D., for the discovery of etherization.
- William T. G. Morton
- Date:
- 1853
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Statements, supported by evidence, of Wm. T.G. Morton, M.D., on his claim to the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of ether : submitted to the honorable the Select Committee appointed by the Senate of the United States, 32d Congress, 2d session, January 21, 1853 / presented by Mr. Davis of Massachusetts, and referred to the Select Committee to whom had been referred the petition of sundry physicians of Boston and vicinity, in support of the claim of W.T.G. Morton, M.D., for the discovery of etherization. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
![doned his experiments in December, 1844, and tried none after- wards. [Appendix pp. 113, 116.) Late in the autumn of 1844, Dr. E. E. Marcy, of Hartford, Conn., as appears from his own affidavit and that of F. C. Good- rich, of Hartford, suggested to Dr. Weils 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 Sec his sulphuric ether in my [his] office to a young man ; * * * and Publica . after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head jfew York an encysted tumor of about the size of an English walnut. The Journal of operation was entirely unattended with pain. Dr. Marcy con- ^T^' eluded that nitrous oxide was more safe, equally efficacious, and opposing ' more easily administered than ether, and therefore to be preferred, Morton and and retained that opinion to December, 1849. Jackson, Dr. E. R. Smilie, of Boston, in October, 1846, asserted that anusjon to he had employed successfully an ethereal tincture of opium to this experi- subdue pain under the knife. He states that he applied this tinc-ment- ture 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 remarkable experiments performed by M. Ducos, by ether, on animals, exhibiting most of the phenomena since witnessed in the human body. Sir Benjamin Brodie tried it on Guinea pigs which it put to sleep and killed. He doubted its safety. Notwithstanding this long series of efforts to procure a true nepenthe, the object still seemed unattainable to the wisest and boldest members of the surgical profession. Velpeau, than whom no higher authority can be quoted, said, in 1839, to avoid pain in surgical operations is a chimera which it is not allowable to pursue at the present day. The cutting instrument, and pain, in operative medicine, are two words which never present themselves singly to the mind of the patient, and of which we must necessa- rily admit the association. Orfila, in his Toxicology, declares absolute insensibility to pain under surgical operations by etheriza- tion, to be a discovery entirely new. Dr. J. C. Warren says, The discovery of a mode of preventing pain in surgical opera- tions has been an object of strong desire among surgeons from an early period. In ray surgical lectures I have almost annually alluded to it, and stated the means which I have usually adopted for the attainment of the object. I have also freely declared that, notwithstanding the use of very large doses of narcotic sub- stances, this desideratum had never been satisfactorily obtained. The successful us^ of any article of the materia medica for this purpose, would therefore be hailed by me as an alleviation of human suffering. Finally, Sir Benjamin Brodie, in a discourse at St. George's Hospital, at so late a date as October 1, 1846, alluding to mesmerism, said, There is no greater desideratum,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21142695_0047.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
