John Collins Warren's Description of the Operation
John Collins Warren (1778-1856)
Etherization, with Surgical Remarks
(Boston : William D. Ticknor and Company, 1848)
Bequest of Dr. John Warren to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1928
Following the first public operation with ether anesthesia, John Collins Warren began to assemble data from over 200 surgical cases to promote the discovery and foster the widespread adoption of ether anesthesia. The page displayed recounts Warren's examination of Gilbert Abbott and his assessment that "Now that the effects of inhalation are better understood, this is placed in the class of cases of imperfect etherization."
This copy of Etherization was presented by Warren to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), then on the faculty of Harvard College. Longfellow said, "I rejoice that such a calm, dispassionate and firm approval of the great discovery should appear from your pen to cheer the timid, and convince the skeptical. The words you have spoken will have great weight for you speak with authority, and have an indisputable right to speak."