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Feature of the month

May 2008

William T.G. Morton

On 16th October 1846, John Collins Warren, a surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, removed a benign angioma from the jaw of his patient. This remarkable and historic operation was the first ever occasion when the patient had been anaesthetised by means of inhalation of ether vapour. The anaesthetic had been administered by Warren's colleague, William Morton. Following this operation, it was recognised that complete anaesthesia could be produced by the inhalation of ether.

Following a meeting of the History of Medicine Section in May 1918, Sir William Osler presented the RSM Library with a small but historically valuable collection of papers he had obtained from Morton's son relating to the first administration of sulphuric ether. The pamphlets are inscribed with notes and quotes in Osler's handwriting.

Excerpt from Henry J. Bigelow's Ether Paper
Excerpt from Henry J. Bigelow's Ether Paper.
View the full image, or read the transctipt of the letter. [7k]

Henry J. Bigelow's Ether Paper, Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal Nov. 18, 1846.

Another surgeon present at the operation was Henry Jacob Bigelow. He read his account of what he had witnessed that day at a meeting of the Boston Society of Medical Improvement held on 9th November 1846. This paper was subsequently published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for 18th November 1846. Here Bigelow named the anaesthetic substance used by Morton, who had wanted to keep its identity a secret in order to patent it.

Cover of Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation
Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation, 1847.

Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation, 1847. By William T.G. Morton.

In this work Morton admitted the identity, already revealed by Bigelow, of his anaesthetic preparation. Following this, he devoted his career to research into surgical anaesthesia and spent more than £20,000 promoting the use of ether. Reduced to poverty in his later years, a national subscription was organised in the United States in order to provide for him and to pay off his debts. He died in 1868 aged 49.

Morton's Letheon, 1847.

Morton named his substance "Letheon" and, in this short work, he promotes its efficacy as an anaesthetic. The term "anaesthesia" was first coined by the physician and man of letters Oliver Wendell Holmes, who suggested it to Morton in a letter dated 21st November 1846.

 

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