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       ,.     83
THE  INVENTION
ANAESTHETIC  INHALATION;
"DISCOVERY OF ANESTHESIA."
                     BY

         WILLIAM  J. MOETON,  M. D.,
membbh of the new york academy op medicine -, op the new york academy op
  sciences; op the new yobk medico-legal society; op the new york county
    medical society; of the American neubological association; assist-
      ant to the chair op diseases op the mind and nervous
        system, in the medical department op the university
         op the city op NEW YORK; member and secretary
           OF THE NEW YORK NEUROLOGICAL SOCIETY,
                    ETC., ETC.       »
[REPRINT, WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS, FROM " THE VIRGINIA
            MEDICAL MONTHLY:' MARCH, 1880.]
          NEW  YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
     1,  3, and 6 BOND STREET.
               1880. 
 
        THE  INVENTION
                  OF

ANAESTHETIC INHALATION;
                  OK,

     "DISCOVERY OF ANESTHESIA."
                  BY

        WILLIAM J. MORTON, M. D.,
MEMBER OT THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE ; OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF
  SCIENCES; OF THE NEW YORK MEDICO-LEGAL eOCIETY; OF THE NEW YORK COUNTY
   MEDICAL SOCIETY; OF THE AMERICAN NEUROLOGICAL ASSOCIATION; ASSIST-
     ANT TO THE CHAIR OP DISEASES OF THE MIND AND NERVOUS
       SYSTEM, IN THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OP THE UNIVERSITY
        OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK; MEMBER AND SECRETARY
         OP THE NEW YORK NEUROLOGICAL SOCIETY,
                 ETC., ETC.
[REPRINT, WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS, FROM " THE VIRGINIA
          MEDICAL MONTHLT,n MARCH, 1880.]
         NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
     1,  3, and 6 BOND STREET.
             1880. 
WlOA 
THE INVENTION OF ANAESTHETIC INHALATION,
        OR "DISCOVERY  OF ANAESTHESIA."
     " The invention all admired, and each how he
      To be the inventor missed, so easy it seemed,
      Once found, which  yet unfound most would have thought
      Impossible."
                                              Milton.

    That a new " discoverer of Anaesthesia " has been discov-
ered, at  this late date  even;  that  extraordinary  and novel
claims for him have been recently  brought  before the medical
and general public with energy and  persistency by  a special
advocate ;*that, in short, the Ether controversy, long since con-
sidered as a res adjudicata. has been again reopened, forms
in itself a sufficient  apology for presenting  a  fresh review of
the subject in a manner which  shall include the  claims made
for  this  third  and  latest  after-claimant.   And whether this

   * Dr. J. Marion Sims, "Virginia Medical Monthly," May, 18V7, and subsequent
editions of reprints.  A third position assumed by the same writer, who, in 1861»
following the lead of Parker, Mott, Francis, and hundreds of others of the best-
known physicians of this city, appended his name to the memorial stating that
" for this discovery, the first great triumph of placing in the hands  of the  profes-
sion an agent capable of rendering the patient safely and at will utterly insensible
to the stroke of the surgeon's knife, the world is indebted to Dr. W. T. G. Morton,
of Boston " ; who again, in 1873, said in a public address, " To my mind it is as
clear that Wells was the discoverer of Anaesthesia as it is that  Columbus was
the discoverer of America " ; and who now, in 1877, thinks " that Long was the
first man to intentionally produce Anaesthesia for surgical  operations," and
was therefore " the true discoverer of Anaesthesia." 
4
modern revival  of  a claim  never viable will be  found  to be
based upon  an accession  of new and reasonably valid proofs
and facts, or whether it is a needless resurrection  of long-
buried antiquarian  remains, unwarranted by any new fact de-
veloped, and interesting merely in  an incidental and histori-
cal way,  is  a point which  will best appear upon making  a
plain presentation of the case.

        Before  18^6,  in all time, surgery was agony.
    The universal practice of Anaesthesia, as it is understood
to-day,  began in 1846.   Before this date pain  was  inevitable.
Mankind in  hospitals, in homes, on  all occasions  of pain inci-
dent to surgery and medicine, suffered without relief.   After
this date pain was avoidable.   Mankind was offered and accept-
ed  immunity, and  every physician  and surgeon in the world
held in his hand the means  and the  method of annihilating it.
    Thus  voluntary escape from pain forms  an  epoch in the
world's history,  as definite as the beginning of the Christian
era, of  vaccination, or of telegraphy; an epoch marked,  more-
over, by results  to humanity more important and more endur-
ing than  those gained by any single contribution  ever  made
to medicine.*  The practice of surgery underwent at this date
a striking revolution, brought about by the revelation of the
fact that  sulphuric ether, properly managed,  would  produce
complete insensibility to the pain of surgical operations.
    This revelation to  the world was made by Dr.  W. T. G.
Morton, of Boston ; f he was the issuer of the new facts.  At

   * "If America had contributed nothing more to the stock of human happiness
than Anaesthesia, the world  would  owe her  an everlasting debt  of gratitude."
—Professor  S. D. Gross, Address delivered April, 1879.
   " It is probable that the American inventor of  the first anaesthetic has done
more for the real happiness of mankind than all the moral philosophers from Soc-
rates to Mill."—Lecky, " History of  European Morals," vol. i., p. 88.
   f At the time of the invention of anaesthetic  inhalation Dr. Morton was a young
man of twenty-six years, industriously making his own way through the  world.
Early thrown upon his own resources by an unfortunate business venture  of his
father's, but with a good New England academy education, moderate ambition,
courage, and a clear conscience to back him, he  had started out,  and had met with
those obstacles which usually attend  the career of the self-made man—obstacles
which, while they delay success, at the same time develop character. His final goal
was the attainment of a medical degree and the practice of medicine. With this in 
5
hand stood  a Bigelow, with  the incisive insight to welcome
and counsel, and the will and the ability to sweep aside the
prejudice and doubt of the hospital surgeons,  and within the
historic  walls of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital  were
found a Warren and a Hayward  to  verify the  revelation with
judicial  fairness, and  to  place  upon  it verified  the  stamp  of
their scientific and  professional approval;  and a Holmes sug-
gested the terms Anaesthesia and  Anaesthetics.*
    Thus issued, fostered, verified,  and christened, the revela-
tion  went forth  into the world in  1846, perfect at its outset.


view, he had already, in 1844, entered his name as a student in the office of a
physician  in Boston, and had  shortly afterward matriculated in the  Harvard
Medical School, where he faithfully attended the courses of lectures.  While  still
a student  of  medicine, practicing  the allied branch of dentistry by the  way as
a means of support, his attention became  fixed upon the anaesthetic properties
of sulphuric ether.  Soon came his announcement of success in its use, and  the
all-absorbing  controversy which  ensued of course precluded further medical
studies.  Afterward  the honorary degree of M. D. was conferred upon him  by
the Washington University, of Baltimore, Md.   That Dr. Morton was " ignorant
of medicine and without  a degree " has been so often repeated  by the tireless
and bitterly personal detractors of the early days  of the controversy, and thought-
lessly  reiterated since, justifies  this  brief allusion  to a branch  of the subject
slightly apart  from the points at issue.
    * Professors Henry J.  Bigelow, George Hayward, John C. Warren, and 0.  W.
Holmes, of the  Harvard Medical School.   Only lately a  distinguished American
writer states that the word Anaesthesia " was coined and introduced into our med-
ical nomenclature in 1847, by the late Sir  James Y. Simpson."  The following
characteristic letter establishes the fact that the word originated in America.   Dr.
Morton at first used the term Letheon, suggested by the fabled  river  Lethe,
to denote oblivion both to pain and to consciousness, but quickly adopted the new
word.
                                          " Boston, November 21, I846.
   " My dear Sir : Everybody wants  to have a hand in a great discovery.   All
I will do is to  give you  a hint or two as to names  or the name to be applied to the
state  produced and the agent.
   " The state should, I think, be called ' Anaesthesia '; this signifies insensibility,
more  particularly (as used by Linnaeus and  Cullen) to objects of touch.  The  ad-
jective will be ' anaesthetic'  Thus we might say,  the state of anaesthesia  or  the
anaesthetic state.  The means employed  would  be properly  called  the anti-
aesthetic agent.   Perhaps  it might be allowable to say anaesthetic  agent, but  this
admits of question.  ...  I would have a name  pretty soon, and consult some
accomplished  scholar, such as President Everett or Dr. Bigelow, senior, before
fixing  upon  the terms which will be  repeated by the lonpues of every civilized race
of mankind.  You could  mention these words which I suggest for their con-
sideration; but there may be others more appropriate and more  agreeable.  Yours
respectfully,                                            0. W. Holmes.
    " Dr. Morton." 
6
     The news quickly reached Europe.   So sudden  was this
 conquest of pain that,  as is well said by Sir James  Paget,* in
 referring to the event, " it might  almost be said that  in every
 place, at least in Europe, where  the  discovery was promoted
 more quickly than in America, the month  might  be  named
 before which  all operative  surgery was agonizing, and after
 which it was painless."  Anaesthesia came into universal prac-
 tice ; ether remained alone in the field  as an  anaesthetic  for
 more than a  year, when  Dr., afterward  Sir James Y. Simp-
 son f suggested  chloroform as a substitute  for it. %   A number
 of other substitutions have since been  made, but have  failed to
 supplant the original ether.  And we  may note, in passing, the
 gratifying fact  that the practice  of  Anaesthesia  is wholly of
 American origin.

        Proof that previous to 184-6 surgery was agony.

    But it  may  be asked, was this  knowledge  new  to  the
 world?   "Was it in 1846 for the first  time  placed in  the pos-
 session  of mankind ?  That  it was,  absolutely and  without

   * " Escape from  Pain: the History of a Discovery."  By Sir James Paget,
 Bart.  "The Nineteenth Century," December, 1879.
   f In sending to Dr. Morton his first publication upon chloroform, Dr. Simpson
 writes :
   " My dear Sir : I have much pleasure in offering for  your kind acceptance  the
 accompanying pamphlet.  In  the ' Monthly Journal of Medical Science' I have a
 long article on Etherization, vindicating your claims over those of Jackson.
   " Of course the great thought is that of producing insensibility, and for that the
 world is, I think, indebted to you.                                 ,
   " With very great esteem for you, allow me to  subscribe myself, yours very
 faithfully,                                           J. Y. Simpson.
   " Edinburgh, November 19, 1847."
   Afterward Dr. Simpson diffused this credit over a great number of observers
 and experimenters, leaving the main idea ascendant that the settled and fixed
 practice of Anaesthesia as known to-day did not begin until 1847.  The files of all
 medical journals throughout all countries published between October, 1846,  and
 November, 1847, are sufficient refutation of this view of the case.
   % This interval of a year is sometimes strangely forgotten, as witness the  fol-
 lowing recent remark: " The men who taught us had  seen the  introduction of
 chloroform rendering possible  prolonged operations, and an accuracy of surgical
dissection  which was before unattainable."—" Advances in Surgery  during the
Past  Twenty  Years."  By Roderick Maclaren, M. D., etc.  " Lancet,"  January
31, 1880.  If we say, rather, that  they had seen all this by ether for a year before
chloroform was mentioned as an anaesthetic, we shall utter the fact. 
7
reservation, is established by the common consent of all emi-
nent authorities, tracing them up to the very day even of Dr.
Morton's first demonstration.
   In 1839 the distinguished surgeon Yelpeau wrote:  " To
avoid pain in surgical operations is a chimera which it is not
allowable to pursue at the present day.   The cutting instru-
ment and pain are two words which never present themselves
singly to the mind of the patient, and  of which we must ne-
cessarily admit the association."  And Orfila, in his " Toxicol-
ogy," declares " absolute insensibility to pain under surgical
operations by etherization to be a discovery entirely new."
   Professor J. C. Warren, already  referred to, says:  " The
discovery of a mode of preventing pain in surgical operations
has been  an  object of strong  desire  among surgeons from an
early period.  I have freely declared, that, notwithstanding
the very large doses of narcotic substances, this desideratum
had never been satisfactorily obtained."  And again, January
6, 1847:  " I  hereby declare and certify that I never  heard
of the use of sulphuric ether by  inhalation as a means of pre-
venting the pain of surgical operations, until it was suggested
by Dr. William T. G. Morton in the latter part of October,
1846."
   Sir  Benjamin  Brodie,  in  an address  delivered  at St.
George's  Hospital, London, in October, 1846, said:  "There
is no greater desideratum  either in medicine or surgery than
to have the means of  allaying or preventing bodily pain, not
only in  surgical operations, but in other cases also; but there
is good reason to apprehend that it has not been reserved for
the revival of animal magnetism under a new name to accom-
plish that for which all physicians and surgeons have been
looking in vain from the  days  of Hippocrates down  to the
present time."  What Brodie  despaired of became an accom-
plished  fact within twenty-four hours of the delivery of his.
address.
   The facts thus far detailed are fixed and  immutable.  Not
a  word  admits  of discussion or denial;  they demonstrate
clearly  that  something novel was revealed  to the world in
1846—something not yet in the possession  of  mankind; in
themselves they are prima facie evidence that what was new 
8
was  a  discovery—the discovery of Anaesthesia as applied to
surgery—and that this discovery was made in 1846.

The  discovery was  made  in 184-6 • it went forth from Dr.
     Morton's  hands.  He alone  vms known or heard of in
     connection with it until after its success was established.
   And but one man was known as author in relation to these
events, and that man was Dr. Morton.  He it was who asked
for an  opportunity to administer  the ether, and his hand ad-
ministered it before a crowded amphitheatre of skeptical wit-
nesses; his, the  responsibility  of failure  and its  attendant
ridicule, and his, the risk of an almost certain indictment for
manslaughter,  in case of the death of any one of the patients
upon whom the  preliminary experiments  were made which
led to this public  trial.  During this trying and crucial period
he alone  was known or heard of  as originator in connection
with the use of ether until after its safety, efficacy, and utility
had been established beyond a doubt.   Claimant he was not,
for from  whom could he claim anything?   No one else had
claimed to have discovered Anaesthesia.  It did not exist—or
the testimony of Orfila, of Brodie, of Warren, and of  all con-
temporaneous  and eminent  authorities is false.   It was not
therefore  claimable  from any  one.  It originated then and
there, in  1846.  At that moment it was revealed, announced,
verified, introduced, and  popularized,  and the discovery went
forth to the world—issued by Morton, indorsed by the Hospital.
   Antiquarian exploration, prompted, whether it  be by
sophistical or by  honest partisanship, assails this position in
vain, and on this basis posterity will render  that verdict unani-
mous which promoters of confusion now seek to delay.   From
this elevated plane Dr. Morton,  living, combated assaults with
a forbearance not accorded to him in return, but with a per-
sistency which was convincing of his faith in the justice of his
cause;  and in his grave he awaits the world's unanimous ver-
dict of confirmation and approval.

         After-claimants arise ; their characteristics.
   But at this point in  the history of Anaesthesia, clear-cut,
defined, and impregnable as Dr. Morton's position would seem 
9
to be, we are brought straightway to the unfortunate period of
controversy, the inevitable sequel of every great discovery and
invention.  Numerous after-claimants arose and bid fair yet to
arise. The after-claimant, whether with good intentions or with
bad, seems to be the natural parasite  of the discoverer or in-
ventor.   If honest, he claims that  certain prior efforts of his
own were of a nature sufficiently definite to constitute the dis-
covery or invention.  And such a claim may possess a certain
amount of merit if these efforts have been put on  record at
the time, with  proper dates and  witnesses, it may be; if this
has not been done, their value can not be relied upon, for every
one knows how easy a thing is to repeat after it has been  once
accomplished.  The puzzle solved, its solution seems ridicu-
lously simple, and each wonders how he failed to do it.  But
it is obviously unjust, with another's solution in hand, to inter-
pret previous steps and  attempts  as equivalent.   The  little
misstep on this side or that is set straight, and such an after-
claimant comes conscientiously to believe, since he  was so
near being, that  therefore he was, at this prior time, the dis-
coverer.  He forgets that, while he paused onthe verge, an-
other by chance  or intent pushed  on, by the same route per-
haps, and took the final step of success.   But the  after-claim-
ant ignores this final step.  He substitutes his imperfect results
previously obtained for the now perfect ones ; exchanges his
own uncertainties for the new  certainties; and is  now said to
" antedate "  the unfortunate discoverer.  The injustice of this
is so glaring that the scientific world has been driven to admit
the law that an observer  can not claim credit for his observa-
tions unless they have been submitted to some proper scientific
tribunal, and thus at least, if not in print, become published.
The reasons  for and the  elements  of every discovery soon to
come, for instance, are  uow working in  many human minds.
When the prospective discovery is born, each worker may be-
lieve that  the  discovery  is his.  But the world must honor
some one of them, and it has always selected him whose work
was coincident with the  public birth of the discovery, who
both detected the  main fact or  principle involved and  demon-
strated  its application, and who also issued, announced, and
proclaimed it,  especially if he did this against difficulties and 
10
prejudices.  And such issuer's position is many times stronger
if he has had absolutely no relation  personally, or in writing
or print, with the after-claimant, and if, in addition, the latter
has not a scrap of published record to show for his alleged
prior discovery.
    But there is another kind  of after-claimant whom words
can not too strongly denounce.  With nothing to lose, since he
has done nothing, and everything to gain, he makes up in au-
dacity  what he  lacks in facts.  He advances his claims " with
a presumption  exactly proportioned to his inability to estab-
lish them."  He thrives in  the confusion he creates, and takes
advantage of mankind's intuitive love of fair play to inspire a
doubt which the world, occupied or  perhaps  indifferent, may
not at once dispel.  The inventor and revealer of the Anaes-
thesia of 1846 was to have an experience of both these classes.

       Definition of terms, "discovery of ancesthesia."
    But we must  pause a moment at this point to ask what is
meant  by the "  discovery of Anaesthesia."  The terms in them-
selves  have been responsible for much confusion.  Do  they
comprise the conception—the theory, an attempt to carry out
the theory in practice, or the perfected and now familiar re-
sult ?
    The word Anaesthesia (from a, non, and a'lcrdr)<n<;, sensation)
means  simply the state of  insensibility to pain—an abstract
and observed  fact as old  undoubtedly as  the human  race.
Syncope, the coma of disease,  a concussion  of the brain, an
excess  of alcohol, opium, or other narcotic, and the inhalation
of  noxious  or  other  gases—any and  all  of these  agents or
means  rendered this condition familiar to  the past.  This was
accidental  anaesthesia.  But we may go still a step  further,
and find that the state of insensibility to pain, brought about
in human beings with a humanitarian and  scientific purpose—
that of relieving the pain of surgical operations—was equally
familiar.  This was intentional anaesthesia, produced both by
ingestion and by inhalation.  Not only allusions expressed in
the clearest terms in the writings of  the older authors, but the
record of the very means—the drug or the gas and the detailed
method of its  employment—leaves  us in  no doubt upon this 
11
 point.   Middleton, in his  tragedy  of " Women beware Wo-
 men," published in 1657, writes:
          "I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons
           To this lost limb, who, ere they show their art,
           Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased party

    But  we do not intend to enter into the past literature of
 the subject.   A word will  show how clearly both the concep-
 tion  and the practice of Anaesthesia in surgery were under-
 stood.   " It," says Pliny, not later than A. D. 79, speaking of
 mandragora,  "is  drank against serpents  and  before cutting
 and puncturing, lest they should be felt" ; and, later, Dioscori-
 des,  " It is used to cause insensibility of those who are  to be
 cut or cauterized" ; and still again,  a century later, Apuleius,
 " If any one is to have a member mutilated, burned, or sawed,
 let him drink half an  ounce with wine, and let him sleep until
 the member is cut away, without any pain  or sensation " ; thus
 the records run on,  up to our own century.
    And we pause for no more than a glance at attempts nearer
 in time to 1846 to establish the practice of Anaesthesia.   The
 modern  experimenters have been  many:  notably Dauriol,
 Hickman, Esdaille, Haller, Deneux, Blandin,  Yan  Frieten,
 Juvet, Teden, Wright, Collier, Justine, Dickinson, Nicholson,
 Collyer,  Smylie, Bowne, Long, Wells (Jackson made a sugges-
 tion  of what  was already well known).   All these men " in-
 tentionally produced Anaesthesia for surgical operations"*—
 Borne by one agent, some by another, many of them  by inha-
 lation, and several by  the inhalation of  ether vapor.
    Sir Humphry Davy, in  1800, had already recognized the
 fact that nitrous oxide, or laughing-gas, would annul  pain, and
 suggested its use in surgery.  The effects of ether vapor had
 been  generally recognized as analogous to those of laughing-
 gas, and  its properties of mitigating or annihilating  pain had
 become the common property  of text-books.  Nysten, in his
 " Dictionary of Medical Sciences," speaks of the inhalation of
 ether as  familiarly employed to mitigate  the pains  of  colic,
and figures an apparatus for its administration.  In  1795 Dr.
Richard  Pearson  published a pamphlet upon the subject, and
* The wording of the claim of novelty recently set up for Long. 
12
in a work of Dr. Beddoes, published in 1796, the case of a pa-
tient is related, in which pain was relieved and sleep immedi-
ately produced by inhalation of the ether.   Among American
authors the stupefying effects of the inhalation of  ether were
noted by Godman  (1822),  Mitchell (1832), Professor Samuel
Jackson (1833), Wood and Bache (1834), and Miller later.
    Among the actual experimenters, some seem  to have met
with marked success.  Dauriol specifies five cases  of success-
ful painless operations.  Hickman's results, published in 1828,
are remarkable.  He describes a method of " suspending sen-
sibility by the methodical introduction  of  certain  gases into
the lungs," during which " the most delicate and  most danger-
ous operations are performed without producing pain in the
individuals submitted to them."
    But we forbear  mentioning other equally definite results,
such as were obtained by Collier, Esdaille,  and others.  (Long,
Wells, and Jackson, from the special prominence given to their
claims, will be considered separately.)  We have brought for-
ward enough for our present purpose.  Our point is, that in-
tentional Anaesthesia for surgical purposes,  whether by potion,
by inhalation, or otherwise, was perfectly well known up to
the very date  of 1846, when the "discovery  of  Anaesthesia"
burst  upon the world, and was hailed as its greatest boon.

1846  gave to the world a new mode of procedure—a new
           method—a practice before unpracticed.
    But what, then,  did  1846 give  the world new?  Why did
this date form an epoch in surgery?  In the answer lies the
definition of the " discovery."  It was simply that the familiar
fact took upon itself  a  new and  living form; that what was
unreal and delusive became real; that what was impracticable
became practicable and available: 1846 gave to the world a
practice, a mode of procedure, for annulling the pain of surgi-
cal operations, a method, so clearly defined and so  definite in
characters that others could be taught to follow it.

                Surgical anaesthesia an art.
    And  this gift was an art, according to the  definition of the
term by  the highest authorities—for  art implies  performance, 
18
 practice; while science signifies the underlying principles  in-
 volved.   The practice of music is an art;  its theory, a science
 —the sailing  of ships, the art; the fundamental principles
 involved, the science, of navigation—the method of annulling
 pain for surgery, the  art; the  fact so long familiar to the
 world, i. e., that the entrance of certain  substances  into the
 blood would produce  insensibility  to pain—the  science  of
 Anaesthesia: 1846, then, gave to the world the art  of anaes-
 thetic inhalation.

 Elements of novelty in  this art: they consist in proof of  the
     full power of ether, proof of the safe applicability of this
     power  to  surgery, and proof of these two points  to the
     world.  Dr. Morton alone  and first  proved {in  proving
     these three points) the existence of surgical anaesthesia;
     for it  only began in  184-6, and began with  his efforts.
     " He alone discovers who proves."
    And wherein lay the novelty of this art ? As we have seen,
 the  past teems  with attempts to  establish it.  What was new
 consisted (a) in the perfect demonstration of the till then im-
 perfectly demonstrated anaesthetic properties inherent in ether,
 (b) in the demonstration that the property of producing com-
 plete insensibility to pain was applicable  to surgery, and  (c)
 in the demonstration of these two points to the satisfaction of
 experts (physicians)  and the public—a  triple success involv-
 ing proof of the full power of ether,  proof of its applicability
 to surgery, and proof of this to the world.   Thus public dem-
 onstration or proof of the full power  and the  safe applicabili-
 ty of ether established  universal anaesthetic inhalation.  The
 " discovery " was simply success in demonstrating what others
 had  failed to demonstrate.  And this triple proof, this demon-
 stration  of  a new mode of procedure and of its universal
 applicability to the  needs of  surgery, constitutes in itself all
 the  novelty  that can ever be claimed in connection with
 the  "discovery of Anaesthesia."  "He alone discovers  who
 proves," says Dr. Paley.  " He," says Sydney Smith,  " is not
 the inventor  who first says the  thing, but he who  says it  so
long, so loudly, and  so  clearly that he compels mankind  to
hear him."   And, again, Goethe: "He is  the  inventor who 
14
generalizes the single instance, and who makes the world con-
cede that it is thus generalized."
   "He is the first inventor in the sense of the act," writes
Chief Justice Story, our highest authority upon the subject,
" who has first perfected and adapted the same to use. ... In
a race of  diligence between two independent  inventors, he
who first reduces his invention to a fixed, positive, and practi-
cal form would seem to be entitled to a priority of right to  a
patent therefor."

Surgical anaesthesia an invention—the invention of anaesthetic
                        inhalation.
   x\nd this art was an invention rather than a discovery.
To discover is to make known what has before  existed.   The
expansive force of steam, the pressure of the atmosphere, gal-
vanism, a new star—these were discoveries.  The discoverer
in these instances found out  and made known previously ex-
isting  facts.  He who first  noted that certain  agents  now
called  anaesthetic would  produce insensibility to pain was the
true " discoverer of  Anaesthesia."  Unfortunately, we  can
never determine who first noted and made known this fact; as
we have seen, it is as old as historical time.  But the practice
and the performance of  annulling pain for surgical purposes,
of doing this at will and repeatedly, i. e., the system, the mode
of procedure, the art of anaesthetic inhalation as practiced to-
day, was new in 1846.   No  such mode of procedure  had  ever
before become established.   It had not  previously existed; it
was a new creation.  It owed its birth to the practicability of
the system.  Never, up to that  moment, had it been in such
form that others, to use the words of Judge Story, were  able
" to produce precisely the result described by using the means
specified, without any addition to or subtraction  from them."
The new mode of procedure was, therefore, an invention—the
invention of anaesthetic inhalation.

                  Special after-claimants.
   Who, then, was the inventor and revealer ?  First in the
field was  Dr. Charles T. Jackson, a chemist in Boston, who
based a claim to the whole discovery upon an alleged sugges- 
15
tion to " try ether," and upon an alleged previous knowledge
of its  property  of  producing insensibility, gained  in  1842.
Then came Horace Wells, of Hartford, who in his first publi-
cation, made three months after  the  Boston  announcement,
claimed that he had produced insensibility to pain in " twelve
or fifteen " cases of extraction of teeth  in 1844.  And in 1849
appeared  a communication to a medical journal *  from  Dr.
Crawford  W. Long, of Georgia, stating that he had used ether
to produce insensibility three times in 1842, once in 1843,  and
once in 1845.  None of these three individuals, be it noted,  had
ever, previously to 1846, written or printed a  word upon  the
subject.
   It  is this latter after-claim of Dr. Long  which  has been
again presented  to the medical and general public.  Its pres-
ent status, indeed, is  due to the reflected light  derived from
its modern advocate and exponent, Dr. Sims, rather than to
its intrinsic worth.  On its own  merits, it had  already been
presented to the scientific  world in 1849, weighed and found
wanting in any single point of novelty, and had long  remained
unnoticed  and forgotten.  And nothing new has since come
to light.  We have therefore merely a repetition of  the origi-
nal story.
   There are also other, less prominent, after-claimants.  They
are Drs. Esdaille, Collyer,  Smilie, Bowne, Justine, Dickinson,
Nicholson, etc.

            Dr. Jackson's claims briefly analyzed.
   Of Jackson's and  Wells's claims we need say but a  few
words.  Jackson's  casual reply to a question, which he after-
ward magnified  into a suggestion, comprised  nothing novel;
it had  been many years in print; several men had tried ether,
and it  stood on record that its use was dangerous to life.   As
Brodie said, when the discovery  was announced,  "I have
heard  of  this before.  I have tried it  on guinea-pigs, and it
killed  them.  The  question is, is it safe?" And Dr. Morton
proved by several distinguished witnesses that at the time of
this  alleged suggestion lie had already been buying  sulphuric
* "Southern Medical and Surgical Journal," December, 1849. 
16
ether in large quantities  during the three preceding months,
and had,  moreover, questioned other authorities (Metcalf and
Wightman) besides Jackson.
    But why did not Dr. Jackson himself " try ether ?" *  Here,
at least, would have been a slight advance, even if he failed in
the trial.  To meet this objection, he relates  an experience
occurring four  years previously,  in  1842, when  he inhaled
ether vapor to allay the irritation  caused by the inhalation of
chlorine gas.   Here, again,  there was  nothing new.  Pereira,
in his famous work, then as now a familiar text-book, states,
" the vapor of  ether is  inhaled .... to relieve the  effects
caused by the  accidental inhalation of chlorine gas." f
    But Jackson says he became insensible to external impres-
sions.  Pereira  writes: "If the air be too strongly impreg-
nated  with ether, stupefaction ensues."  But at this point
Jackson  takes a great leap.  He says he drew the inference
that a surgical operation could be performed upon a person
while in  this condition. Well, perhaps he did draw this infer-
ence, though one can not help regretting that he did not say so
before his inference was proved to be a certainty, four years
after, in 1846.   I may infer that it is going to rain to-morrow.
But it may  not  rain.   If I wait till it rains to state my infer-
ence, I am not a little ridiculous.  And, after all, an inference
is no more  than a theory—a guess; it needs  demonstration,
proof, before it becomes  knowledge.  Every recorded experi-
menter in the past, and, as we know, they were many, was
possessed  of this inference,  and this, too, more strongly than
Jackson was, for each of  them acted upon  his  inference, the-
ory, or guess,  and attempted to produce  surgical  anaesthesia,
which Jackson did not.   Thus Jackson's claim is clearly based
upon an hypothesis—a supposition, and that not one original
with himself nor ever made the subject of a demonstration by
   * " Did you make one little experiment ? " said the late Professor Louis Agassiz
to Dr. Jackson  at  a meeting of the Boston Academy of Arts and Sciences, adding
dryly, after receiving a negative reply, " It would  have been better if you had."
On another occasion Professor Agassiz said, "If Dr. Morton had killed his first pa-
tient, would you [Jackson] have accepted the blame just as now you ask for the
honor ? "  Dr. Jackson was silent.
   f" Elements of Materia Medica," etc.  London, 1839.  Cited from Dr. H. J.
Bigelow. 
17
him.  Not only had he never performed  an experiment with
the view of annihilating pain for a surgical operation (the in-
halation of ether  as  prescribed by Pereira as an antidote to
the fumes of chlorine can  scarcely be claimed as such), upon
himself, upon any one  else, or upon  an  animal, but he  had
never even witnessed  an operation until a month after  Anaes-
thesia left the Massachusetts  General Hospital as a perfect
and demonstrated fact.  A week after this test operation at
the Hospital, he was thus interrogated  by the Hon.  Caleb
Eddy :  " Dr. Jackson, did you  know  at such time " (October
16th) " that, after a person had inhaled ether and was asleep,
his flesh could be  cut with a knife without his  experiencing
any pain V  He  replied,  "No, nor  Morton either; he  is a
reckless man for using it as he has; the chance is he will kill
somebody yet."  And the  Hon. Edward Warren states  that
at about the same time Dr. Jackson told  him that " the  new
use of  ether was dangerous," etc., " and would, he feared, be
attended with fatal consequences, and that he (Dr. Jackson) was
not answerable  for the results, and that therefore he  would
refer me to Dr. Morton for further information."
    This was after  Morton's demonstration at  the  Hospital.
Therefore what Morton and the world knew, Dr. Jackson, as
shown by  sworn testimony, declared  that he did not know—
in  fact, denounced as unsafe  in strong language.  But  Dr.
Jackson was equal to the  occasion.   The  discovery assumed
an unexpected magnitude, and his ingenuity grew apace.  He
now stated that Dr. Morton had made all his experiments un-
der his instructions, that he acted simply the part of a " nurse,"
and that therefore,  on the grounds that " qui facit per  alium
facit per se," he alone deserved the  credit. This claim re-
ceived  but little  credence  here in America  where the facts
were known; but, submitted on the as yet unimpeached au-
thority of Jackson, to the French Academy of  Sciences,  pre-
posterous as  it was, it found,  in the  absence of denial  and
the presence of Milne Edwards, a warm personal friend  and
advocate of  Jackson, a wide  credence,  whose influence is
yet felt, not alone  in Europe, but also, by reflection, here in
America.
   The  conversations with Warren and Eddy, above quoted,
           2 
18
in themselves disprove that there was any harmony of action
between Jackson and Morton.  He denounced Morton, and
disclaimed  any connection with the use of ether.  There is
not a scintilla of evidence to prove that Morton worked under
Jackson's directions.  The latter was not even aware that Dr.
Morton had asked Dr. Warren for a public  test;  much less
bad he suggested this course.   This " nurse theory " is proven
by a most overwhelming mass of evidence to be a fabrication.
At a later period, when  the subject of a patent was mooted,
Dr. Jackson's name was inserted in it, in deference to  his
strenuous claims, and to secure him the payment of the five
hundred dollars which he charged for his unnecessary piece of
advice  when he  said " try ether."  Of this  patent we will
speak further on.

            Dr. Wells's claims briefly analyzed.
   We will take less time with Dr. Wells's  claim.  He  ad-
vanced upon the hypothesis of Jackson—the hypothesis in fact
of the long line of experimenters, both ancient and modern, but
most clearly expressed by Sir Humphry Davy, in 1800, and
made the attempt to establish  a method of painless surgery.
His first statement, made some months after Dr. Morton's  an-
nouncement, was  that  he had used nitrous oxide  gas  in
" twelve or fifteen " cases of extraction of teeth in 1844.  We
will not enter into particulars.  The final answer  to  him is
that he established nothing, left  nothing behind him,  as a re-
sult of his experiments.   More than this, he himself absolute-
ly abandoned his researches for two years, or  until the events
of 1846 reminded him of what he had lost. And when at this
date Dr. Morton wrote him of his  success, instead of replying
as the  true discoverer would  have done,  " But, Dr. Morton,
there is nothing  new in  what you write—I myself found this
out two years ago," he writes :  " If the operation of admin-
istering the gas  is not attended with too much trouble, and
will produce the effect you state," etc.  Now the " effect" Dr.
Morton stated  was  exactly  what Dr.  Wells saw fit  some
months later to claim as his discovery.  This  letter, still pre-
served, is in itself fatal to Wells's claim.  Many, in short, had
used anaesthetics  as effectually as Wells did in 1844, and, fol- 
19
lowing Wells, no one  used anaesthetics in  1845.  There was
no sequence to Wells's efforts.   Surgery still was agony.
    There remains a single point which needs a little clearing
up.   So vividly was Dr. Wells impressed with the idea that
the long-sought-for Anaesthesia could be made practicable, that
he went to Boston, in 1844, and administered his nitrous oxide
to a  patient  at this  same Massachusetts General Hospital.
This  was a bold step, and deserved success.   But the patient
screamed with pain at the first touch of the knife, and Wells
returned in disappointment to Hartford, abandoned the sub-
ject,  and went into  other business.  But to-day Anaesthesia by
nitrous oxide  gas is a simple and available process.  In Wells's
hands at this test experiment it was  not.   With  his appara-
tus and limited amount of gas, he was forced to fail, and,
under the same circumstances, he would fail  to-day.  Wells
himself seems never to have been able to produce the nitrous
oxide anaesthesia of to-day.  It is not generally known, but it
is a fact, that after 1846, when all the world rang with the
praises of ether, Wells made many futile efforts to  produce
anaesthesia with the gas, hoping thereby to supplant ether.  So
late as 1847 he repeated the Boston experiment in the amphi-
theatre of the New  York Hospital before distinguished physi-
cians and surgeons, among whom were Mott, Francis, Par-
ker, Yan Buren, and others, and,notwithstanding that he now
possessed all  the established  experience of the ether  anaes-
thesia, he again absolutely failed.  If he produced anaesthesia
in 1844, he could have repeated it in 1847.  Here are two well-
attested public failures, proving that nitrous  oxide anaesthesia,
as Wells understood it, did not work.   How, then, reconcile
the success of to-day in the use of this gas with the failure of
1844-'47?  The explanation is simple.  Nitrous oxide anaes-
thesia did not begin until 1863.   The process, as now known,
came into practice  then ; and the  step  from  failure to suc-
cess was a short but a vital one.  It had already been pointed
out in 1848.*   It was the substitution of the large gas-bag—

   *The credit of substituting a large and efficient volume of gas  for the usual
small supply of the " traditional exhilarating gas-bag " is due to Professor Henry
J. Bigelow, of Boston, who in abreast excision, performed at the Massachusetts
General Hospital,  April, 1848, used successfully about sixty gallons of the gas. 
20
the large volume of gas—for the small gas-bag and deficient
supply  used by Wells.  Wells did  not give  enough  gas.*
Whatever credit may be  due  to  his intentions, it would be
manifestly unjust to accord to him a success which  he never
attained.  Nitrous  oxide  to-day, and since 1863,  produces
anaesthesia, but it never did this in the hands of Wells.

             Decisions in favor of Dr. Morton.
   As against  the claims of Jackson  and Wells, a cumulative
mass of decisions has been  given in favor of Morton.   In our
own country, where there is no ultimate scientific tribunal of
appeal, such decisions are of great value.  The Board of Trus-
tees  of the Massachusetts General Hospital, composed of dis-
tinguished  citizens familiar with  every detail  of the  contro-
versy,  to whom Jackson  was  well known and  Morton un-
known, decided with one voice in favor  of Morton  in 1848;
and  subsequently, in  1849, after reviewing their decision, at
the request of Jackson, unanimously confirmed it.   This de-
cision, rendered as it was  by a competent  "jury  of the
vicinage," should be final.   Further, no fewer than six f com-
mittees  of the  United.  States Congress have unqualifiedly
affirmed the justice and the  validity of Dr. Morton's title as
the real discoverer or inventor.
   But  legislation  upon  these reports of committees, when
they were presented to Congress, was  obstructed in  each in-
stance by partisans of one after-claimant or the  other.  At
last, two more committees,  on different occasions, reported
simply  " to grant  relief generally,"  the  bills  being thus
worded, at Dr. Morton's request, in order that after-claimants
should submit their claims to judicial  investigation and  ver-
dict.  This invitation they never'could be brought to accept;
they courted darkness, not light.

   * The reason usually assigned for the Boston failure is, that the gas-bag was re-
moved too soon. The true cause here, as well as in New  York, in 1847," of failure
was clearly the inadequacy of the process, as above detailed.
   f  Reports of Select Committee, H. R., 30th Congress, 2d Session;' Naval Com-
mittee, H. R., 32d Congress; Military Committee, Senate, 32d Congress; Naval
Committee,  Senate, 82d Congress; Select Committee, H. R., 32d Congress, 1st
Session; Military Committee, Senate, 37th Congress, 3d Session. 
21
   Furthermore Dr. Morton has been sustained by the almost
unanimous attestation of the medical faculties of Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, and other cities, and  by the great mass
of the medical profession generally, by a host of eminent men
of science and letters, by the chief authorities of the National
Government, and by institutions of learning in America and
Europe.
   Soon after the announcement of 1846, the French Academy
of Arts and Sciences, to which Dr. Morton's case was scarcely
presented, while Dr. Jackson's was engineered  by a personal
friend and a member, made a mutual award—to  Jackson for
the observation, to Morton for  the  application.   Could the
Academy repeat its investigation at  this day, it would find it
difficult to locate the observation that ether might produce in-
sensibility to pain.  Before Jackson,  this observation had been
made and recorded by Townsend, Nysten, Pereira, Orfila, by
Godman, Mitchel, Professor  Samuel  Jackson, Wood  and
Bache, and  others. Unlike these observations, Jackson's was
an after-thought; his inference had never been recorded until
it was no longer an inference.  If the credit lies in the  ob-
servation, it certainly does not belong  to Jackson.  The  ap-
plication of this  observation was the only novel thing  about
the discovery, and with that the Academy credited Morton.
   Much as Dr. Morton was honored by this award (since the
vital point was granted  to him), he actually refused to  accept
any decision in which  his name was joined with Jackson's;
and  finally, after two years' delay,  the  Academy forwarded
to him the Montyon prize, in the form of a gold medal, with-
out consulting him.
                        The patent.
   At this stage, in a resume of the  " History of Anaesthesia,"
the patent taken  out chronologically belongs.   Much  unkind
language has been used about this  patent; it has been  the
weightiest weapon of attack possessed by after-claim ants.  No
opportunity has been lost to bring it  forward in a manner  de-
rogatory to Dr. Morton, as covering a " secret remedy," " the
Letheon,"   "a patented compound," etc.,  etc.   In the first
place, this proves nothing against Dr. Morton's title  to dis-
covery ;  on the contrary, it is the strongest point in his favor, 
22
that the Government, counseled  by such men  as  Webster,
Choate, and Curtis, and after much deliberation, granted him
a patent.
   And it is untrue to speak of the patent as implying a  " se-
cret remedy."  The very word, from pateo, to be open, signifies
the opposite of secrecy ; letters patent give certain privileges to
the holder, but are open to the inspection of every one.  There
was no secrecy about the ether patent.  The agent ether and
the various steps necessary to its successful application to the
alleviation  of pain, as then known, were specifically detailed.
The patent did not imply secrecy,  but protection to  a citizen
for the product of his brain.  And " Letheon " was  probably
as good  a name for an agent applied to a process  of producing
oblivion as one would suggest to-day for the same process, did
it now arise—quite  as expressive  as Anaesthetic, now applied
to the same class of agents, or as Nepenthe, an older term.
   When one recalls the great fact  that in the anaesthesia of
1846 surgery and medicine secured  an ally which more than
doubled their usefulness, that, in fact,  a world got relief from
pain, it seems somewhat hypercritical  to  elevate into impor-
tance the side-issue  of  a patent.
   And, after all, this  matter of a patent is simply a  question
of medical ethics.  It may be looked  at in  two lights—the
one, as regards the medical profession ; the other, as regards
the Government  that  granted it.   As  regards the former, it
was an  unfortunate mistake.  It  created at  first in medical
circles a prejudice against the invention—not because the rem-
edy was secret, for  the veil of secrecy  was  instantly dropped
so soon as Dr. Morton was sure of its  success and of its not
being pirated from  him*—but because it  is  against the ac-
cepted "code of medical  ethics" to patent  anything.   The
medical profession, it is said, gives its labors, its time, the
product of its brain, to humanity ; and so it does, to a certain
extent, and it is  to  its honor that it does.   But extremes  of
sentiment  are  not always borne out in practice.  Physicians
are paid for their services,  when those  benefited can afford  to
pay.  And certainly  the  world could afford to pay for its
* How necessary his caution, later events verify. 
23
greatest  boon :  the world is  not a poor patient.  But, again,
physicians do take out certain patents.  Those who set their
knowledge down in books copy-right their works, are paid for
the product of their brains, and are protected in  an exclusive
right to the results of their labor.  This is no less than  a pat-
ent.  But, after all, discussion upon this point, as regards Dr.
Morton,  is neither here nor there, for at the  time of the dis-
covery he was not a member of the medical  profession,* and
therefore was not amenable to its code of ethics;  he was an
experimenter, and entitled to different views.   His real  inten-
tion was to protect  his invention during its  infancy, to keep
it within control until its use had become  established, to pub-
licly verify his right to it, and properly to derive  some  profit
from the gift of what was his own  to  give.   In certain re-
spects it was fortunate that the application of the ether  at the
outset was protected by a patent.  At the  time  of its an-
nouncement its marvelous power was  discredited;  it was in-
haled from an instrument then considered essential to success ;
many, even under skillful direction, failed  to  carry the inhala-
tion further than the exhilarating  stage,f and,  had  it been
used indiscriminately before its capacity and  its dangers had
been fully  tested by scientific  authorities, there  is but little
doubt that some accident occurring in ignorant and unskillful
hands would, for the time at least,  have delayed its  general
use.
    As against the Government, the  case is a  remarkable  one.
There is no question of taste or propriety here.  If Dr.  Mor-
ton violated the code of  medical ethics (an artificial  code at
best), in  taking out a patent, the Government which gave the
patent violated the  very soul  of ethics,  which  is honesty;
struck at the root  of all ethics, by itself  using without any
repayment the article and its application—the process,  whose
exclusive control and  ownership it  had  guaranteed  on its

   * The degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon  him in 1849.
   \ " I placed some sulphuric ether in the instrument, and gave it to a gentleman
to inhale; the effect was to cause him to laugh heartily, but there was nothing like
sleep.  What should be done in such a case ?"—Extract  from a  letter  from a
well-known physician of Philadelphia, dated November 12, 1846. 
24
honor to the patentee.*  The Government, during fourteen
years (the term for which the patent was issued), stultified its
own acts of protection.   After that, what citizen  would re-
spect the rights of the inventor of the anaesthetic art?
    But it has been urged in favor of the Government that the
dimensions of such an invention were of too great magnitude
to be the subject of a patent; that it was like  patenting the
air we breathe or the water we drink, and that, therefore, it
was justified in  disregarding its guaranteed protection and
using it itself. If the Government were called upon to pay full
value for what it received, this argument would  hold good, for
the payment of such a price would  be impracticable; but it
was asked to pay a reasonable sum, and it paid nothing.  The
discovery had both an immeasurable and a compromise value,
and this latter an honest debtor could pay.  It is  a  curious
anomaly, that reward should  be in inverse ratio  to the magni-
tude of the service rendered.

Dr. Long's claims analyzed at length, and refuted by his own
     words :  his claims based upon five experiments scattered
     over five years.
    We now come to what has been termed a foot-note to the
ether controversy; an addendum  dating mainly from a publi"
cation made in 1877.  That, in reading an analysis  of this
claim, a friendly critic may say labor superabat  opus, is freely
granted; but, on the other  hand, it  seems  worth while  to
make and  preserve a public protest  against even so  foolish a
claim, since it  has an act, however  ill-considered, of a  State
Legislature to  rest upon, and  since, moreover, thus far but
one side of the question has been heard either by the general
public, to whom  the claim has been  assiduously presented, or
in the legislative proceedings in Georgia just referred to, by
which, by a snap judgment, the claim was recognized.f
   * " I consider a patent-right as sacred as private property," said the Hon. Alex-
ander H. Stephens, of Georgia, in alluding to this subject in 1854,  "and would
exert my influence as far as any one to prevent the Government from pirating."
   "Private property " should not be " taken for public use without just compen-
sation."—" Constitution of the United States."
   f On the occasion of the presentation to this body of a combination portrait
of Dr. Sims and of Dr. Long, in honor of the latest discovered alleged discoverer. 
25
   It seems  that, among other after-claimants, one, an esti-
mable physician of Georgia, Dr. Crawford W. Long, woke up
to the fact  only so  late as 1849, three years after anaesthetic
inhalation by ether (1846) had been in universal practice, that
it would be  well to record in some medical journal the state-
ment that he had " used sulphuric ether by inhalation  in  sur-
gical operations on several occasions " (as many as five in the
course of as  many years) prior to 1846.  He accordingly, in
December, 1849, published " an account of the first use of
sulphuric ether by  inhalation as an anaesthetic in  surgical
operations."  This communication, tardy as it was, Dr. Long
very properly made, in simple justice to himself.  No special
attention was paid to  it, for reasons  which will soon become
apparent.  He  seems indeed merely to have desired to place
himself on record, in  connection with this subject, in 1849.
And  now, in 1877, this forgotten record  is dragged from  its
obscurity, and  amplified and adorned into a patent  of  dis-
cover}T.   The interests of truth will be best  served  by refer-
ring back to Dr. Long's original text.   We shall then find
opportunity for comment upon this extraordinary revival.

Dr. Long unheard of until the world had enjoyed- exemption
                from pain for three years.
   " For nearly three years," writes Dr. Long, in this his first
public utterance (1849) upon the subject of anaesthesia, "the
various  medical journals have contained numerous articles on
the employment of sulphuric ether by inhalation,"  etc.,  etc.
Dr. Long had, up  to this moment, contributed none of these
"numerous articles."  The process of anaesthetic inhalation—
Anaesthesia—had sprung into life and reached its perfect growth
through no word of his.  No one had yet heard of him.   He
had  not, therefore, contributed in the minutest degree to the
revelation, hailed with universal astonishment  and  acclama-
tion, and adopted at once into practice in 1846.  His claim,
such as it is,  must stand or fall by itself.   He was an isolated
observer, isolated from the world, and  isolated  as regards Mor-
ton, Wells, or Jackson.   Neither he nor his experiments were
known to any of these three.   There is in his case no question
of mutual acquaintance, suggestion, or the like.  And yet we 
26
are told by a distinguished Georgian Senator,* on the occasion
of the recent legislative proceedings, that " it was reserved for
one of our own fellow citizens, ... to confer not only a sig-
nal triumph upon Georgia, but a blessing upon  the human
race, which is beyond the power of language to express or the
imagination to conceive."   But Dr. Long conferred nothing;
that is just the point.  "The human race"  never heard of
him until it had enjoyed exemption from pain for three years.
How little information Dr. Long had conferred upon the sub-
ject of the inhalation of ether in the South may be gathered
from the comments of the leading medical journal of a neigh-
boring State (the " New Orleans Medical and Surgical Jour-
nal "), which, in the  January following the Boston announce-
ment, said:  " That the leading surgeons of Boston could be
captivated by such an invention excites our amazement. . .  .
Why, mesmerism, which is repudiated by the savants of Bos-
ton, has done a thousand  times greater wonders.  . .  . What
shall we hear next ? "

   Dr. Long's original claim and its recent amplifications.
   It is certain, then, that Dr. Long had no share in the events
of 1846, the hitherto recognized era of painless surgery.  What,
then, did  he do?   The whole Long claim resolves itself into
two parts: the one, what Dr. Long says of himself; the other,
what Dr.  Sims  says of him.   We shall  show that  the former
is not a basis for a claim to discovery,  and that the latter is a
claim built up from insufficient data.
   Dr. Long states that he " was the first to use ether as an
anaesthetic in a surgical operation," and this in 1842, adding
then in detail  the five instances in which he had  "used" it
(three times in 1842, once in 1843, and once in 1845).  Dr.
Sims states that Dr. Long "was the first man to intentionally
produce anaesthesia for surgical operations, and that this was
done with sulphuric ether in 1842."  The one states his " use "
of ether, and later on confesses that his method in itself could
not have  produced anaesthesia, accidentally even;  the other
maintains that anaesthesia was produced—two claims as differ-
* United States Senator Gordon. 
27
ent as black  and white, for  the first constitutes  failure, the
second, success.
   We shall soon see  that Dr. Long expressed his claim cor-
rectly ; that  Dr. Sims  has made an unjustifiable assertion.
Dr. Long shall prove that Dr. Sims has made an erroneous
deduction.

Originally a claim of mere " use " of ether: in this Dr. Long
                    had been forestalled.
   Here naturally arises the question of what Dr. Long  means
by the " use " of ether.   This word is a misleading element in
his claim.  That he used  ether,  that he gave it by inhalation
—this much of course is admitted.  But what was the result?
Mere use is  inadequate to constitute discovery or invention.
The past teems, as we know, with records of attempts to pro-
duce insensibility to the pain  of  surgical operations—whether
with this gas  or vapor or that  makes  little or no difference.
And sulphuric ether by inhalation had already been used for
this purpose.   Wright, as  earlyT as 1829, records it  as an habi-
tual practice of his to give ether by inhalation in a surgical
operation upon the ear.*  Men  used steam to propel boats
before Fulton, electricity  to  convey messages before  Morse,
vaccine virus to avert  small-pox before  Jenner,f and ether to
annul pain before Morton.
    The  vital point is, how and in what manner did  Long use
ether?   We  shall show from Dr. Long's  own words that he
did  not  use  it successfully; that he did not produce insensi-
bility to pain—Anaesthesia, as we know it to-day, the Anaesthe-
sia that convinced the hospital surgeons and the  world; that
he did not advance upon the attempts of the past;  that  he did
not therefore uncover a hitherto unobserved fact or law, i. e.,
discover anything, nor  combine well-known facts or laws into
a new mode of procedure—i.  e.,  invent anything;  that  he did
not  himself believe in his experiments;  and that, moreover,

   * "The Medical Record," New York, August  2, 1879.  Communication by
Dr. Samuel Sexton.
   \ Benjamin Jesty is claimed to have vaccinated his wife and two sons  in 1774,
twenty-two years before Jenner introduced vaccination.—Dr. Thomas F. Wood,
" North Carolina Medical Journal," October, 1879. 
28
he absolutely abandoned them;  that  no one else used ether
because he used it (he found no followers); and that, finally,
not only on the evidence of well-known  facts, but also on his
own confession, the world  is under no obligation to him for
any single item of information.
   "He discovers who proves,"  we may again  quote from
Paley;  but of the three proofs, essential to the establishment
of practical Anaesthesia—proof of the full capabilities of ether,
proof that these were applicable to surgery, and proof of this
to physicians and the world—Dr.  Long  did not accomplish
even the first.

Dr. Long's confession that his  " use" of ether was a total
   failure, and that he, therefore, gave up experimenting.
   A few quotations will establish these points.  We shall be
straightway brought to the very pith of his case by the follow-
ing summary, as  given by himself, of his communication of
1849, already referred to :
   " The result of my second experim-ent in etherization was
such as led me to believe that the anaesthetic state was of such
short duration that ether would only be applicable in cases in
which its effects could be kept up by constant inhalation during
the  time of the performance of the operation.   Under this
impression, up to January, 1847, I  had not used ether in but
one case in extracting teeth, and thus deprived myself of ex-
perimenting  in the only class of cases which are of frequent
occurrence in a country practice."
   Now, in  the first place, the remarkable  admissions  com
tained in  this sentence would be valueless if any subsequent
experiment had taught Dr. Long more  than he here enunci-
ates.  But he never of himself learned more than this, for he
distinctly states that he "was under the impression " embod-
ied in this quotation until January,  1847, three months after
the  announcement of universal and practical Anaesthesia in
1846.
   What, then, was  Dr. Long's impression ?  What was the
exact condition in 1842, which, seen through the  glasses of
1846, he names Anaesthesia ?  Dr. Long arrived at the conclu-
sion  that  the "anaesthetic  state was of such short duration 
29
that ether would only be applicable in cases in which its ef-
fects could be kept up by constant inhalation during the time
of the  performance  of  the operation "—a  state,  in  fact,  so
short in  duration as to cause him, as he  says in  the next
breath, "to deprive himself" of experimenting in even the ex-
traction of teeth, the simplest, and most accessible of cases
which occur in a country practice.  Now, the extraction of a
tooth is a very short operation. Dr. Long's " anaesthetic state "
must have been over in a twinkling.  If it did not last long
enough for tooth-pulling, it would hardly do for surgery.
    This, then, is the condition of affairs which  Dr. Long dig-
nifies with the title of Anaesthesia.  It  was easy enough  in
1849 to apply the then familiarized terms to this crude "state"
occurring in  1842 ; to write upon the tablets of the past the
records of the present, teeming with new and fruitful demon-
strations.   But the anaesthetic state of to-day and  since  1846
is of long duration—as long as the surgeon chooses to make
it.  In Dr. Long's experiments it was short; but  why short ?
Evidently because he found "constant inhalation," i. e., con-
stant breathing of the  vapor, impossible.   If  this had  been
possible to him, he would have resorted to it.   There was  no
more difficulty in 1842 than there is to-day in producing an an-
aesthetic state of long duration, if  Long had known  that this
could  be done.  Why  limit his cases to a minimum, and de-
prive himself of experimenting in such simple cases as tooth-
pulling, if constant inhalation were known to him ?   Clearly,
he did not know it.
    Erase at this minute from human knowledge all that was
taught and learned of  Anaesthesia in 1846, all that is known
of Anaesthesia to-day, and let the reader put himself in Dr.
Long's place—let him repeat in the hospitals of the  land Dr.
Long's process without  taking from or adding  to  it; let him
produce  with ether an " anaesthetic state of short duration,"
incapable of maintenance by constant inhalation—a condition
so transitory, so inapplicable as to cause the experimenter him-
self to deprive himself of its use in the very simplest of mi-
nor operations which were constantly at hand—and we submit
that this is an inadequate basis on which to rest a claim to be-
ing an inventor or discoverer of ether Anaesthesia. 
30
    There was something wrong, something unsuccessful, about
 such a process  as  Dr. Long describes.   It does not  express
 what ether is capable of;  does not constitute the Anaesthesia
 of to-day, as known and practiced all over the world—a  state
 of long duration, prolonged at the operator's will by constant
 inhalation, and applicable to  all  cases.   Can it be believed
 that by this  process a single capital operation could be per-
 formed ?  Dr. Long had never tried  ether in such an opera-
 tion, and, more, refused  to continue  it in minor operations.
 Repeat his  process to-day, and no doubt some  ready mind
 would take the ether in hand, prolong  the  inhalation, and
 cause forced Anaesthesia.  But Long did not do this.   Wilhite
 did it accidentally—Long, never.   Indeed, his process was not
 Anaesthesia at all, as we shall soon see.  It was failure.

 Causes of Dr. Long's failure •  in his  five  experiments  he
     never got beyond the exhilarating effects of ether common
     to the " ether frolics " of the time.
   It  becomes  interesting  at this point  to  know why Dr.
 Long failed;  why he deprived himself of its use in more than
 five  minor operations, and why he abandoned his experiments.
 We  shall find the  explanation of this equally explicitly nar-
 rated, though in a light, as is natural, none too unfavorable  to
 the narrator.  Let us look more closely at this second experi-
 ment, which  impressed Dr. Long so  vividly  over the whole
 period of time (1842-1847) during which there is a chance  of
 a claim  for  originality—this  experiment which, as he con-
 fesses, embodies his whole knowledge  upon ether inhalation.
   Yenable,  the subject of it, was an expert in breathing
 ether.  He says, " The young men of Jefferson and the ad-
joining counties were in the habit of inhaling ether for its ex-
 hilarating powers, and I inhaled it myself frequently for that
 purpose,  and  was very fond of its use "—i. e., he administered
 it to himself.  " Ether frolics " seem to have been very com-
 mon at this time in Georgia,  as well as elsewhere.  Dr. Long
 and Yenable often participated in them, and  the former de-
 scribes how they originated in his  vicinity : " The subject  of
 the inhalation of nitrous  oxide gas was introduced in a com-
 pany of young men, . . . and  several desired me to prepare 
31
some for their  use.  I informed them that I had a medicine
(sulphuric ether)  which would produce equally exhilarating
effects."  There was  nothing novel in this.  The similarly
exhilarating properties of nitrous oxide and ether were stated
in the text-books of the time, and had been tested  in most of
the  medical schools  of the  land.  But Yenable  and Long
agreed between themselves ("had  some conversation about
the probability that the tumors, small wens upon the neck,
might be" cut out while I was under the influence of ether,
without my experiencing pain ") to test the point as to whether
ether would annul  pain.  There was  nothing  novel in this.
This attempt had been made at frequent intervals  since the
beginning of historical time ; it had, moreover, been  accom-
plished with considerable success by the use of ether.
   But we will proceed slowly.   We must know who is giv-
ing the ether.  Of the first operation, Yenable deposes under
oath, u I commenced inhaling the vapor before the operation
was  commenced, and  continued it until the  operation was
over."  Then Yenable kept his eye on the whole affair, knew
just  what was going on ; otherwise, how could he  know and
swear to it that he continued the inhalation until  the opera-
tion was over ?  And of the second he says : " In this operation
I stopped inhaling the ether before the operation was finished.
...  I inhaled  the ether in both cases from a towel, which was
the common method of taking it."  And Dr. Long  says of the
same experiment, " The patient  continued to inhale ether
during the  time of the operation."  Now, surely, Yenable
administered the  ether to himself, and remained conscious all
the time.  And Dr. Long recognizes that his patient retained
consciousness.  Speaking of this same  crucial  second  experi-
ment, he says, "In this operation the inhalation ceased before
the first incision was made; since that time " (" up to January,
1847 ") " I have invariably desired patients  " (three more dur-
ing three years), " when practicable, to continue its inhalation
during the time of  the operation."  This instruction  implies
cooperation  in  the  process  on the part of the patient.  It is
just  such an instruction as would be given to a person admin-
istering ether to himself.  Addressed  to the etherized and
unconscious patient of to-day, it would be ridiculous.  This 
32
point, as to whose hand  administered the ether, is studiously
left in doubt  by Dr. Long; but  we see that  it must  have
been Yenable's.   And we now, for the first time, understand
clearly why the " anaesthetic state " was of " short duration ";
why  " constant  inhalation" was impracticable.  Yenable
was administering the ether to himself, and Dr. Long did not
know that there was any  other method of giving it.  No won-
der that under these circumstances the state was brief, evanes-
cent, and incomplete: it  would be  equally so to-day.

In Dr. Long's crucial and most successful experiment,  the pa-
               tient, as both testify, felt pain.
   But now comes the damnatory point of this second  experi-
ment.   The patient felt pain.  This both Long and Yenable
confess.  Dr. Long says the patient " exhibited signs of slight
suffering, but asserted after the operation was over that the
sensation of pain was so  slight as  scarcely to be perceived."
Yenable says, " I felt a little pain."  Here, then, is positive
failure. Dr. Long's anaesthetic state  of short  duration was
nothing more nor less than the fleeting peripheral numbness
often associated with the first or exhilarating stage of the com-
plete  anaesthesia of to-day.  Certainly, Long could not  have
performed  a capital  or prolonged  operation.   His state was
not the familiar stupor of to-day, an utter  annihilation of both
consciousness and pain; it was, as we have said, simply a mo-
mentary peripheral numbness of the skin—then, as now, in-
adequate to the  simplest needs of surgery—inadequate, as
Long  found it, for the extraction  of teeth even, much more
so for the painless extraction  of a wen from Yenable's neck.
   But why did Dr. Long not take the  towel  into his own
hand and force the ether?  Why not make his patient insen-
sible to pain, if he knew that this  could be done ?  Why not
give more  ether, and make  the " state " of  long duration ?
He did not know that this was possible.

    Dr. Long paused on the very threshold of discovery.
   Knowing what medicine knows  to-day, how wonderful
this halting of Long—this pause at a most critical moment—
on the  very threshold of discovery!   So nicely  balanced  is 
33
the situation that  it almost seems as if he would topple over
into discovery ; but he falls the other way.  It seems almost
inexplicable that he did not seize the towel, force the Anaes-
thesia to the stage of stupor, perform  the operation, and pro-
claim the discovery to the world.  In doing  this he would
have at least proved the inherent power of ether, as we now
know it.   But he failed  in  the first step.  Naturally, no
other step followed,  and this barren experiment  remained
meaningless to Dr. Long, and unknown to  the world, except
as an after-thought.  Place Long, with his process, as he him-
self describes it, in his hand, in  Morton's  position in 1846, in
a crowded amphitheatre of skeptical witnesses, and can any
one believe that he would have been greeted as the " discov-
erer of Anaesthesia " ?

Dr. Long admits that the publication of etherization  did  not
    bide his time / that he made nothing whatever known to the
    world.   He could not, then, as  is claimed, have been " a
    world's benefactor''
    It now only remains to show, on  his own  admission, that
the world got no  knowledge  of Anaesthesia from Dr. Long,
and that on that ground alone it owes him no gratitude.  He
writes:  " While continuously experimenting  with ether  as
cases occurred " (there were intervals of more than  a year be-
tween some of his five  cases), " with  a view of fully testing
its anaesthetic powers, and its applicability to severe as well
as minor  surgical  operations" ["I had no opportunity of ex-
perimenting with  it in a capital operation " *], " others more
favorably situated engaged in similar experiments, and con-
sequently the publication of etherization  did not bide  my
time''  This was exactly Dr. Long's misfortune.
    We have proved beyond a doubt that Dr. Long never pro-
duced a true state of Anaesthesia, and  now we have the proof
that he never made any  of his knowledge, such as it was,
public.  Dr. Long, then, gave the world  absolutely nothing.
*' The publication of  etherization did not  bide his time."  He
had not yet "fully tested the anaesthetic powers" of ether.

            * Quotation in brackets taken from another place.
           3 
34
At  the  rate of an average of one case a year of the kind he
has described, how long would the world be in getting  pos-
session of Anaesthesia ?  And yet the enthusiastic Legislature
of Georgia has declared that he is " a world's benefactor,"
and on this ground has selected Dr. Long as one of its two
representative Georgians who are to be placed in the National
Picture Gallery, at Washington. May we modestly ask what
benefaction the world received from Dr. Long ?

Dr. Long confesses that he was uncertain whether his tran-
    sient " effects " were  due to the imagination, peculiarity
    of the patient, mesmerism, or ether.
   Dr. Lono- leaves  us in no doubt as to why he made no'
publication.  Not only had he not fully tested the anaesthetic
powers  of  ether,  but he was by no means certain  that his
" anaesthetic  state"  was due  to ether.   He writes:  "  The
question will no  doubt occur, Why did  I  not publish the re-
sults of my experiments in etherization  soon after they were
made ?   I was anxious, before making any publication, to try
etherization in a sufficient number  of cases to fully satisfy my
m.ind that Anaesthesia [sic] was produced by the ether, and was
not the effect of the imagination, or owing to any peculiar in-
susceptibility to pain in the persons experimented on.  At the
time  I was experimenting with ether, there  were physicians
' high in authority'  who were  advocates  of mesmerism,  and
recommended the induction of the mesmeric state as adequate
to prevent  pain in surgical operations."
   Here we have the whole story.   Dr. Long's method in it-
self could not have produced a valuable Anaesthesia.  We know
on his own admission and his patient's that it  did not do so,
and Dr. Long himself now tells us that he did not know ex-
actly  what  the " state " was; that he was uncertain about the
true nature of his results.   He was waiting " to fully  satisfy
his mind that Anaesthesia was produced by the ether,"  to test
this.  He was uncertain whether the effects obtained were due
to imagination, to idiosyncrasy of the patient, to mesmeric in-
fluence, or  to ether.  In fact, he never learned more than this
until  informed by the "numerous articles" published after
1846.  No wonder he did not publish his five experiments  to 
35
the world—that  at  his rate of progress the "publication  of
etherization did not bide his time."  His was an  " ether frolic,"
rather than the Anaesthesia of  1846.
    This, then, was Dr.  Long's  "use" of  ether—an after-
thought  recital of five scattered experiments,  not novel  in
their scope,  unappreciated and abandoned by their author, un-
published to the world, unrecognized by any scientific author-
ity, wholly imperfect  and unsatisfactory in their results, and
not connected by the slenderest  thread to the beginning  of
practical Anaesthesia in 1846.   In short, so far as Anaesthesia
is concerned, Dr. Long need never have drawn breath.*

   Modem amplification  of Dr. Long's claim refuted; its
                         sophistry.
    Such is what Dr. Long says of himself.  We now come  to
the second part of the Long claim—what Dr. Sims says of him.
And  we take up at once  Dr. Sims's main assertion.  It  is
" that Long was the first  man  to intentionally produce Anaes-
thesia for surgical operations, and that this was done  with
sulphuric ether in 1842."
    In the light of historical  facts  already cited, and of Dr.
Long's  own  utterances, already quoted, this broad assertion
falls flat in every direction.  For, in the first place, Dr. Long
was not " the first man to intentionally produce Anaesthesia
for surgical operations."  Hundreds of men had preceded him,
notably Esdaille, Hickman, Dauriol, Wright, and many others
in modern times, to say nothing of the far  past.  Nor, in the
second place,  was he the first  to  use  ether; its stupefying ef-
fects by  inhalation  had been  noted and  recorded by  many
authorities; these effects had been  utilized  to  annul pain by
several  of these; and, more than  this, Wright, in 1829, had
habitually  employed ether vapor  by inhalation to annul the
pain of an operative procedure upon the external ear.  If we
ask why he  did not push the matter, and  extend the applica-

   * " Those only are here reckoned as discoverers from whose work may  be
traced, not merely what might have been the beginning of the discovery, but the
continuous history of events consequent on the evidence of its truth.  Long, it is
true, might under this rule be excluded; yet his work can not fairly be separated
from the history."—Sir James Paget, op. cit. 
36
tion of ether, we may ask  with equal reason the same ques-
tion as regards Long.  And, thirdly and finally, Dr. Long did
not produce Anaesthesia at all.  He had no right to this word,
borrowed from later and another's demonstrations.   The word
does  not apply  to  the ephemeral "state" produced  by the
self-administration of ether common in " ether frolics."   Dr.
Long  confesses that his  anaesthetic state thus produced  was
too short for tooth-pulling even ; for this reason he abandoned
it, " deprived himself" of its use, in these cases.  And  he saw
no way out of his difficulty; he had no idea of the forced Anaes-
thesia of to-day; he simply knew what every well-informed
medical  man knew, that ether in small amounts by inhalation
allayed sensibility to external impressions.*  He  might have
read  also that in large doses it produced stupefaction ; f but he
never tried the large dose.:}:   The very foundation falls out from
Dr. Sims's  anaesthetic  superstructure.   At all  points  where
well-known historical facts do not comfute him, he is confuted
by Dr. Long's own statements.  But Dr. Long's advocate pays
little attention to the facts in the case.   The object of his ex-
position for Long  is apparent.  His  appeal is to  the unin-
formed,  to the new generation, too indifferent or too occupied
to do more  than accept his fiat.  His argument apparently is
an attempt to  befog the  public mind, to so confuse  and in-
termingle  dates, actors, and results  in the  history  of  Anaes-
thesia as to cause the reader to doubt that there was any one
central  figure in the  discovery  far overtopping  all  others.
He affects to distribute a certain amount of credit to  all  the
parties to the ether controversy—to  make  them  all in some

   * " I have in these cases put a teaspoonful of ether into a cup or evaporating
dish, floating in a basin of warm water, and caused the patient to inhale the va-
por, by merely breathing over the dish, which in almost every case will  allay the
irritation."—" Diseases of the Ear," &c, by William Wright, Esq., Surgeon Aur-
ist to her late Majesty Queen Charlotte.  London, 1829.  Cited from Dr. Samuel
Sexton, New York.
   f Pereira, and others.
   \ Wilhite was a student in Long's office.  The latter knew of a supposed dan-
gerous stupor  of an hour's duration, produced by Wilhite in 1839 by a forced
administration of ether, and this no doubt deterred him from repeating the pro-
cess.  Wilhite seems to  have suggested ether to Long: he was, indeed, Long's
Jackson. 
37
way related and dependent, one upon the other.  He drags
down  those  who are  prominent, and  elevates those who
are otherwise.  He ignores the fact  that the perfect demon-
stration of 1846 differs from any other experiments  made in
the same direction, and  reduces all the parties to the contro-
versy to one common level of experimenters.  The whole affair
is thus reduced to a simple question of priority—of who was
the first experimenter.  It is no longer a question of results,
but a simple question of time—of date.  Here is the oppor-
tunity to insert Long, and we find  him straightway included.
Then, with the adroitness of a juggler, Long, Wells, Jackson,
and Morton  are  well mixed  up, truth merges  into  fiction,
facts become distorted into new relations, and  suddenly, with
a few clever passes, Long looms up  from  out the confusion,
labeled as the " discoverer of Anaesthesia."  And the effect of
the  pose is heightened  by the apparent  air of truth which
gives weight to the false impressions conveyed.  " The  labors
of Long and his co-workers " is the new description which we
get of the discovery of Anaesthesia.   We are asked to believe
that, in some mystical way, Long was a " mutual laborer"; that
he contributed as a " co-worker " to the invention of 1846 ; and,
finally, he is called a  " co-discoverer."   This is pure sophistry.
Dr. Long was no more a " co-worker " than Dauriol, Hickman,
Wright,  and hundreds  of the experimenters  of  the past.
Either he invented  or discovered anaesthetic inhalation for
surgery in 1842, or he did not.  No claim of his  contribution
to or participation in the result  of 1846, which is the date of
the world's real knowledge and practice of painless  surgery,
can for a  moment be entertained, however ingeniously it has
been presented; and, finally,  it may be remarked that,  if Dr.
Long had made a discovery in 1842, he deserves the execration
of mankind for taking no measures to give it to the world.
His silence for four years (up to 1846, and indeed up  to 1849)
is irreconcilable with the claim  now made for him of being  a
discoverer.

       Several of Dr. Sims's misstatements corrected.
   Several grave misstatements of fact contained in Dr. Sims's
communication remain to be pointed out. 
38
   Dr. Long's own statement of his " experiments in etheriza-
tion," as he terms them, is that they numbered five—three in
1842, two of which were upon Yenable, one in 1843, and one
in 1845.  In two minor operations, in which Dr. Long specifi-
cally states that he did not use ether, Dr. Sims states that he
did use it, thus wrongfully adding to  the  scant  record  this
number—an addition of no inconsiderable importance, consti-
tuting as it does forty per cent, of the whole.   Here is the
evidence of this.  Dr. Sims states that " on the 9th of Septem-
ber, 1843, Dr. Long exsected  without pain three small tumors
from  the  head of Mrs. Mary Yincent."   In recording  this
same incident of the 9th of September, 1843, Dr. Long  him-
self writes: " From one of these patients (Mrs. Yincent) I re-
moved three tumors in one day;  the inhalation of ether was
used only in the second operation."
   Again, much pains is taken to create the impression that
Dr. Long " published " the results  of his experiments to the
world.  A sort of quibble in the use of the word quoted is
conveyed; this apparently for the purpose of keeping from
view the fact that Dr. Long realty  published nothing in print
until  1849.  " He," Dr. Long, " published it [the discovery]
before all men," writes Dr. Sims, though we have this modifi-
cation added, " True, his was a very contracted world.   He
lived in an obscure little town, where there were no railroads,"
etc., etc.  But we  may ask, Was there no post-office in this vi-
cinity by which communication  with the outer world could be
attained ?
   However, Dr. Long himself contradicts this  idea of pub-
lication, whether by print or  public utterance.   In the first
place, he says : " The question will no doubt occur, Why did 1
not publish the results of my experiments in etherization soon
after  they were  made?  I was waiting to fully satisfy my
mind," etc., etc.   And again, more explicitly, " The publica-
tion of etherization did not bide my time" ; or again, "Had
I  been  engaged in the practice of my profession in  a  city
where surgical operations are performed daily, the discovery
would no doubt have been confided to others who would have
assisted in the experiments."   Compare with this Dr. Sims's
rendering: " Dr. Long's operations under ether were witnessed 
39
and known by all medical  men in his neighborhood, and by
the whole community."  The statement, therefore, that Dr.
Long published the discovery before all men is manifestly an
exaggeration.  The inconsistencies between Long and his ex-
pounder are irreconcilable; and these and what follow are but
passing samples of their whole tenor as compared with Long's
original text.
    A most inexcusable statement is the following: " In Bos-
ton, Mass., a monument has been erected to  the ' discoverer
of Anaesthesia.'"   This statement is untrue.   The monument
itself stands a silent  but inexorable witness  of its  untruth.
The inscription  reads, " To commemorate the discovery that
the  inhalation of ether  causes  insensibility to pain.  First
proved to the world at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in
Boston, October,  1846."  " A citizen of Boston has erected
this monument."  The  word " discoverer" is not upon the
monument. Furthermore, not one of the parties to the ether
controversy went to this  hospital in October, except Dr. Mor-
ton.  His hand  administered this ether referred to ;  he sug-
gested the experiment, and it was  made at his  request, backed
by the efficient aid of Professor Henry J. Bigelow; and what-
ever knowledge of ether the surgeons of this  hospital got in
October, 1846, they got,  as they have all sworn to, from Dr.
Morton.  But, evidently, it is not wished in this instance that
this matter should be understood.  The inscription is first
falsified, and  then the  reader is further  deluded  by  these
words: " But no man is thereon designated by name," the im-
plication being that the matter was left in doubt.  Any citi-
zen of Boston may erect, we  suppose, a monument, putting
thereon his own inscription.  The monument, therefore, does
not express the opinion of the city.  But " first proved to the
world, etc., in October, 184-6," at any rate, excludes Long.  It
can obviously refer to no one but Dr. Morton.  His deeds,
though not his name, stand written thereon.   No other name
would fit  into this inscription.  It has never been claimed by
any one that either Long, Wells, or Jackson was present at
this hospital  demonstration in  1846.  Dr. Morton was there.
The inscription,  then, refers  to  him, if to any of the four.
And yet,  with pleasant effrontery, it is suggested "  that the 
40
names of Long, Wells, Morton, and Jackson be inscribed on
the Boston column, one on each side,  as co-discoverers of
Anaesthesia."
   But,  of many misstatements by implication, none  is un-
kinder than to have drawn Dr. Morton into a comparison with
the mental misfortunes of two of the claimants to  the discov-
ery.   We quote : " Jackson has been for some time in an insane
asylum, hopelessly incurable."   " Wells, disappointed in car-
rying  off the  honor of  the great discovery  of Anaesthesia,
became insane, and committed suicide in New York, in 1848."
" Morton, disappointed at not receiving a  pecuniary  recogni-
tion  from Congress, fretted himself into a congestion of the
brain.   In July, 1868, he returned to New York from Wash-
ington, in the wildest state of excitement,"  etc., etc.   As re-
gards Morton, this is pure romancing.  He  had not  been in
Washington  for  four years—not since 1864.  Then follow
other details, one of which is, that Dr. Morton  was  taken mo-
ribund to St. Luke's Hospital, " where he died an hour or two
later."   " How mournful the fate of these  men ! " adds the
chronicler.  The first fruit of such a presentation  of  the case
was a statement in public print that Dr. Morton had " died half
deranged in  St. Luke's Hospital"—the truth being  that he
died from an ordinary attack of cerebral  congestion, accom-
panying acute rheumatic fever, while driving in Central Park.*
His mind had never been disordered  in the slightest degree
up to  the day  of this attack.   Simple justice demands this
statement in a case where the commonest instincts of human-
ity should have forbidden an intrusion, particularly  an erro-
neous  and disingenuous one.

   * " Dear Doctor : I am happy to be able to aid you in correcting  the report
you refer to, viz., that your father, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, became insane, and died
in St. Luke's Hospital. ... It is, of course, evident from these facts that the affec-
tion of the brain from  which he suffered was one  incident merely—like the ordi-
nary attack of delirium in fevers—to the natural course of an acute disease (acute
articular rheumatism).  I may add that I had frequently met your father previous-
ly, and had never noticed any signs of mental disorder.
                             " Very truly yours,
                                  " (Signed)     Louis A. Sayrb.
   " New York, April 5,1880." 
41
    Absurdities connected with the question of priority.
   So much for the Long claim, old and new.  It is the oft-
repeated story of " priority—the  story of the host of after-
claimants who  first  dabbled in an invention, not  who  first
made it; and, in this instance, it has not even the advantage of
being recorded priority.  The common consent of the world
has already decided this question  as regards other great inven-
tions and discoveries.   Who, for instance, first discovered and
invented vaccination ?  The young countrywoman of Sudbury,
who said of small-pox : " I can not take that disease, for I have
had cow-pox " ; the Duchess of Cleveland, who said that she
had no fear about her beauty, for she had had  a disorder
which would prevent her from  ever catching the small-pox; *
Benjamin  Jesty,  " noted for having been  the first person
known that introduced the cow-pox by  inoculation, and  who
made the experiment from the cow on his wife and two  sons" f
■—and  this twenty-two years before Jenner gave the world vac-
cination—or Jenner?  The countrywoman, the Duchess, and
Jesty were familiar with the isolated fact; but Jenner  had the
genius and the perseverance to  demonstrate that the fact held
good, not only  once, but alwaj^s—that the practice was safe,
useful, and applicable to the necessities of humankind.  And
he both proved this, and  found followers: and  the world
properly honors Jenner.   Jenner made vaccination what it is.
Morton made anaesthetic inhalation by ether what it is.  Both
generalized from single instances and popularized their inven-
tions.  Consecutive anaesthesias followed Morton's efforts, just
as consecutive vaccination followed Jenner's.
   Again, Hull, Arnal, the Earl of Stanhope, and Franklin
experimented with a view of propelling boats by steam.   Ful-
ton demonstrated  (what they  failed to do) that the process
was  practicable.   And, when  aerial navigation  becomes a
fixed  fact, who  shall we  say invented it—a King, a Wise, or
what not aeronaut; the Montgolfier brothers, who sent up the
first balloon ; some one else who, before their time, will be al-
leged to have flown a paper balloon ; or, indeed, Icarus himself
   * Cited from Professor Henry J. Bigelow.
   f Cited from Thomas F. Wood, M. D.: " North Carolina Medical Journal/'
October, 1879. 
42
with his wax-fastened wings?   Or shall we give  the credit to
the man whose air-ships make daily trips  between New York
and Boston ?
    But does not this question of  "priority" carry its  absurd-
ity upon its face?
    Admit  the claims made for Long to be tenable, and other
prior experimenters will come forward and unseat him from
his short-lived glory.  And where is this  retrogressive search
for the paternity of painless surgery to cease ?  Already we have
a Bowne, a Wilhite, a Smylie, and Esdaille: we will not repeat
the long roll.   And when  their day, each in turn, is done, shall
we next proceed to summon up, in chronological order, all the
prominent  figures in  the far past who have  intentionally en-
deavored to annul pain for surgical purposes?  Such a search
would  lead us back  to Adam himself, who was cast into a
deep sleep  to undergo the removal of a rib.  Here, surely, pri-
ority may historically rest.  And we may, then, accept Anaes-
thesia  as a good gift from God, first exercised upon Adam,
and then lying, in crude form, in the lap of time until redis-
covered in  Boston, in a. d. 1846.  And there is nothing to pre-
vent any individual, or any State that desires to do so, from
erecting any monument they please, or from sending to Wash-
ington an oil portrait of anybody. We suggest the retrogres-
sive plan above delineated to the expounder of Long's claims,
who has  already taken  the three steps backward of Morton,
Wells, and Long.
    But dreams, unverified  theories,  inferences,  guesses, fail-
ures, imperfect results, unrecorded and fruitless  experiments
do not constitute discovery.    " He is not  the  first discoverer
or inventor who  first recognizes a fact, but he  who, having
recognized  it, proves it and publishes it to the world." *  The
highest authorities confirm this view.
    "While," says Sir James  Paget,f already once quoted,
" Long waited,  and  Wells turned  back, and Jackson was
thinking, and those  to whom they had talked were  neither
acting  nor thinking, Morton, the 'practical man,' went to
   * C. S. Briggs, M. D., " Nashville Journal of Medicine," October, 1879.  Edito-
rial against claims made for Dr. Long.
   f "Escape  from Pain."—"Nineteenth Century," December, 1879. 
43
work, and worked resolutely.  He gave ether successfully in
severe surgical operations, he loudly proclaimed his deeds, and
' compelled mankind to hear him.'  His claim was very clear."

Dr. Morton the true " discoverer of anaesthesia " / tests which
          prove this / finality of his contribution.
   Dr. Morton had faith in his convictions and in his results;
he had the courage both to speak and to act; what he said, he
proved.  He demonstrated that sulphuric ether would pro-
duce complete, safe, and  repeatable insensibility to  pain (be-
fore  unproven by ether or by any agent), that this  state was
applicable  to surgery (before inapplicable), and this he made
plain to experts and to the world.
   His contribution was in itself final; his effort brought all
previous knowledge upon the subject to a focus;  the past (up
to 1846) had brought forth only aborted results; the future
added but detail and substitution.  His work by  reason of its
extent, its  sufficiency, and its completeness, then first consti-
tuted invention, by reason of its novelty and publicity was a
veritable revelation.
   And his labors stand  the true test of invention  or discov-
ery—that of a " consecutive and  continuous history," dating
from the truth which he  made evident.   The world uses
anaesthetics to-day, not because  Long or Wells or Jackson
used them, but because Morton used them.  His work and the
beginning of the knowledge and the practice of anaesthetic
inhalation are, therefore,  not alone coincident in  time, but are
also inseparably related as cause and effect.  He is, then, the
true inventor and revealer of anaesthetic inhalation, the true
discoverer of Anaesthesia, and his the exclusive honor.
    "He found," writes  Professor Henry  J.  Bigelow,  "the
practice of ether inhalation an amusement of chemical lecture
rooms and schools; he left it the sovereign anodyne  of the hu-
man race in its moments and hours of agony.  He found ether
stupor as hazardously uncertain as was the narcotism produced
by pouring down  the opium ' a boire' of Canappe ; he left it
as manageable and safe  as  the  sleep that follows  a  dose  of
laudanum."
    It is much to be regretted that Dr.. Morton's request, often 
44
privately, and twice publicly repeated in the form of a bill
submitted to the United  States Congress, to submit the con-
troversy to  some competent and  final tribunal, was  not ac-
cepted.   Eloquently as  these bills were urged, and much  as
they were desired by Dr. Morton,  they were in  each instance
defeated by the joint efforts of after-claimants.  With a Gov-
ernment placid  in  its  spoliation, and after-claimants  who
shunned investigation, justice, reward, honor, or thanks were
not to be his lot.   This, hard  to bear in  itself,  was made
harder by the tireless attacks of bitter controversial  opponents.
Beaten at all points in argument and fact, they changed their
mode of warfare to personal abuse and detraction of character.
Dr. Morton did not reply in  kind ; in this respect he was  ever
almost too  scrupulously considerate,  for it  appears that his
very silence and forbearance became their vantage-ground.
And so tenacious of life have such utterances * been that even
at this date an obviously impartial critic,f while awarding  to
Dr.  Morton fullest credit for the discovery, is, at the  same
time, led to reflect in  his words the coloring  derived  from
these early and unwarranted personal hostilities.
   The acerbity of controversy did not come from Dr. Mor-
ton ;  what  he wrote and said  was courteous,  dignified, and
firm, and infused  with  a calm  confidence of right.   Seldom
have equal  persecutions and misfortunes been the  fate of in-
ventor or discoverer; seldom have they been more patiently
borne  and  withstood, until  life itself, after twenty years  of
strife, was quietly  crushed  out  beneath  the load.   It seems
strange that he, whose mind evolved repose for  all human
suffering, should himself give way under the pressure of in-
justice and mental distress.  Science, civilization, had given
with  too  free a  hand, and required a compensating sacrifice,
whose lot was his.   Though his misfortunes were the founda-
tions of countless fortunes to others—his sorrow inexpressible
happiness to a world—his life the  one single life unblessed by
what was to others blessing, he never complained, but  pur-
sued his way, simply, patiently, and honestly, humbly thank-

   *  " A lie has no legs, and can not stand ; but it has wings, and  can fly far and
wide."—Warbtjrton.
   f  Sir James Paget.   Op. cit. 
45
ful to have been a benefactor of his race.  If in aught he
offended (that, unconscious of its far-reaching beneficence, as
indeed was everybody else at the time  he took out a patent,
in which there was no  secrecy it may  be noted, for  his  new
method,  constitutes  his offense),  have not  his misfortunes
made atonement ?  And, if he had enforced this patent, could
he have received any less thanks than he has?
    Dr.  Morton's  family still  hope  that  the United  States
Government may be  induced  to appoint  a competent scien-
tific tribunal, who shall examine the respective merits of all—
both those of  Dr. Morton and those of the after-claimants—
and thus, in a national and official manner, award at  least the
honor to whom honor is due.  A bill now prepared,  and  pos-
sibly presented to Congress, asking for an appropriation of
money and its " equal distribution " among the " discoverers,"
is the publicly declared object of this latest agitation  of the
subject.  In this request they have no voluntary share  ; their
name has  been included without their consent, and  in  the
face of their protest; *  they have often been asked to join in
such a combination, and as often refused.  They will not be
inconsistent with their past;  will not sacrifice a lifetime's
contest to a bargain ;  will  not barter their birthright, though
it be but an abstract  point of honor, for an easement,  gained
at such  a price ; for " equal  distribution " means equal merit
in the discovery, and  this to  them would seem a preposterous
admission.  They ask first for arbitration, confident  that jus-
tice  for  them, though  dormant, lives;  to  accept, under any

   * " I propose, then, that the whole medical profession—North, South, East,
and West—unite in asking Congress  at its next session to appropriate  this sum
as an 'Anaesthesia Fund,' to be divided  equally between the  families  of  Long,
Wells, Morton, and Jackson."—Dr. J. Marion Sims, " Virg. Med. Monthly," May,
1877. This use of Dr. Morton's name is an assumption unjustified by any usages
of right or privilege, for only one year previously, in January, 1876, Dr. Sims had
addressed a letter to Mrs. Morton, saying that he was organizing a plan " to intro-
duce a bill into Congress asking an appropriation of two hundred thousand dol-
lars, to be divided equally between yourself and Mrs. Wells, as the representatives
of the two men who were instrumental in giving to the world one of  its greatest
blessings—Anaesthesia." " I wish to lay my plans before you, and get  your  assent
and cooperation." This proposition, among others, was, as has been said, refused,
grateful and necessary as such an award would have been.  The grounds  of re-
fusal are stated above. 
46
 circumstances, a mutual award would be a sacrilege and a be-
 trayal.
    There is yet another monument, a simple marble shaft,
 erected in Mount Auburn Cemetery by citizens * of Boston.
 From its  surface is reflected the verdict of posterity.   Upon
 its four faces  may be  read  this  inscription:  " W.  T.  G.
 Morton.  Inventor and Pevealer of Anaesthetic Inhala-
 tion.   Before whom  in  all time  Surgery  was  Agony.
 By whom Pain in Surgery was  averted and  annulled.
 Since  whom Science has  Control of  Pain." f

                        Summary.
    I.  Universal practical Anaesthesia by inhalation began in
 1846.  Before this date, pain in medicine and surgery was in-
 evitable.  After this date, pain was  avoidable, safely, efficient-
 ly, and consecutively.
    Thus voluntary escape from pain formed an  epoch in the
 world's history, dating from 1846—an epoch  marked by a
 striking revolution in medicine, and by  inexpressible relief to
 the human race.  This epoch owed  its birth to the revelation
 made to the world that sulphuric  ether, properly  managed,
 would produce complete insensibility to pain.  This revelation
 was made by Dr. W. T. G.  Morton,  of Boston.  He issued the
 new facts.  Immediate  adoption  and practice were a conse-
 quence of his announcement.   The  world's knowledge of the
 subject came from him.   The very word was coined to meet
 his new facts.
   II.   After-claim ants now arose, none of whom  before this
 date (1846)  had made any printed or  written  claim before
scientific societies  or  the general or medical  public of  ever
having discovered  anything in regard to Anaesthesia.   These
claims  were  after-thoughts,  born of ether's success  in  Dr.
Morton's hands.
   III.  The first after-claimant was Dr.  C. T. Jackson, of
Boston. His claim was that of suggestive science.  He claimed
 to have said," Try ether."  The knowledge conveyed in this
   * A tribute of respect and gratitude from names the most honored and most
respected in Boston.
   \ This inscription was written by the late Dr. Jacob Bigelow. 
47
suggestion was common to text-books, and, further, superfluous
to Dr. Morton, who had already been " trying  ether" during
many months.   Dr. Jackson  himself  had never tried ether
with a view of annulling pain, nor performed a single experi-
ment.
   Dr.  Jackson then  claimed that Dr. Morton had worked
under his directions.  This statement is totally disproven by
the facts and by incontrovertible evidence.  Neither Jackson's
hand, nor  influence, assistance, nor advice,  was recognized,
heard of, or suspected,  by any of the participators in the early
decisive test operations, or, indeed, any other operation, first
or last.
   IY.   The  second after-claimant was Dr. Wells, of Hart-
ford.   His claim  was  that  of unrecorded priority.   He re-
ferred back to 1844, to "twelve or fifteen " experimental cases
of tooth-pulling.   His results were variable.   There was no
sequence to his experiments.  In the  next year  even (1845),.
there was  no  such thing as Anaesthesia known  or practiced.
Dr. Wells's method was insufficient. He himself abandoned it.
No one else at  the time pursued it. After ether Anaesthesia
became world-wide, he made several public failures to produce
Anaesthesia by nitrous  oxide, particularly in 1847.  The secret
of nitrous-oxide Anaesthesia was not discovered until 1848, and
then not by Dr. Wells, and was not practiced until 1863.
    Y.  The third after-claimant was Dr. C. W. Long, of Geor-
gia, a claim also of unrecorded priority ; not advanced, indeed,
until 1849, but revived with additions in 1877.   He  referred
back to " five cases of minor  surgery," occurring  in 1842-46.
Long, on his own admissions, did not produce what to-day is
termed Anaesthesia ; his " effects " depended upon the voluntary
self-administration of the ether by the  patient to  himself ; his
method was insufficient; his  results indecisive;  and he also
distinctly abandoned his use of ether, as being of too " short
duration"  for tooth-pulling  even, and  incapable of main-
tenance by constant inhalation. His attempts, like Wells's, had
no sequence.  In the mere use of ether by inhalation  to allay
pain—to a greater extent, even, than  he used it—he had al-
ready been anticipated b}7 others, notably by William Wright,
Esq., surgeon  aurist to  Queen Charlotte of  England, 1829. 
48
Dr. Long had absolutely no relation with  the event of 1846
which constituted the Anaesthesia known to-day.  The revival
of his claim in  1877 as " the true discoverer of Anaesthesia "
was not warranted by the facts, and was unnecessary.  If, final-
ly, he had really made the discovery in 1842, he deserves the
execration, rather than the praise, of mankind for not having
made it public;  for he is then responsible for the sum-total of
human agony endured from 1842 to 1846.  It is impossible to
believe that, if he had been successful in his five experiments,
he would have been  cruel enough to have kept his knowledge
to himself, or, on the other hand, so unconscious of the value
of his success as  not to have published his knowledge in  some
medical journal.
   YI.   There are also  numerous other after-claimants whose
claims are not at present  especially urged, and not therefore
alluded to.
   YII.  Dr. Morton's contribution to Anaesthesia was in it-
self final; his effort brought all previous knowledge upon the
subject  to a focus;  the past (up to 1846)  had brought forth
only abortive results; the future has added but detail and sub-
stitution.  His work, by reason of its extent, its sufficiency,
and its completeness, now first constituted invention—by rea-
son of its novelty  and publicity, was a veritable revelation.
And he had faith in his convictions and in his results; he had
the courage both to speak and to act;  what he said, he proved
and made public.  He demonstrated that ether would produce
complete, safe, and repeatable insensibility to pain (before un-
proven by ether, or by any agent); that this state was applica-
ble to surgery (before inapplicable), and this he made plain to
experts (physicians) and to the world.  His  labors stand the
true test of invention  or of discovery—that of a "consecutive
and continuous history " dating from the truth which he made
evident.   The world  uses  ether and other anaesthetics to-day,
not because Long or Wells or Jackson used them, but because
Morton used them.  Dr. Morton and the beginning of practical
Anaesthesia are, therefore, not alone coincident, but inseparably-
related  as cause  and effect.  He is, then, the true inventor
and revealer of  anaesthetic inhalation—the true  "  discoverer
of Anaesthesia,"  and his the title to the exclusive honor. 
Iff 6 
■A