After the Abbott operation, Jacob Bigelow sent news of the discovery to Francis Boott (1792-1863), who was living in England. Boott communicated this to James Robinson, a surgeon-dentist, who then performed a painless tooth extraction on December…
Engraving "Wm. T. G. Morton, M.D. surgeon dentist, Boston, administering ether preparatory to performing the operation by which he first discovered and demonstrated the marvellous anaesthetic powers of ether in surgery."
List of patients who have inhaled ether or chloroform for surgical operations in the Massachusetts General Hospital up to April 1, 1848, furnished by H. J. Bigelow, M.D.
Invitation to the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia, signed by William Sturgis Bigelow and J. Collins Warren.
Sixth plate (2 3/4" x 3 1/4") cased daguerreotype of post-injury Phineas Gage. Portrait-style image depicts Gage holding the tamping iron that caused his 1848 frontal lobe injury. Bar marked with inscription from the Warren Anatomical Museum. As with…
Alvin F. Poussaint is Professor of Psychiatry, Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Director of the Office of Recruitment & Multicultural Affairs at Harvard Medical School. Images are used with permission for Perspectives of Change: The Story…
Louis Tompkins Wright, MD (1891-1952) was born on July 23, 1891, in La Grange, Georgia, was son of physician Dr. Ceah Ketcham Wright. Dr. Wright died when Louis was four years old, and his mother, Lula Tompkins Wright, later remarried another…
Mildred Fay Jefferson (1926-2010) was born on April 4, 1926 in Pittsburg, Texas. She earned her bachelor's degree from Texas College at age 16, and earned her master's degree from Tuft's University in 1947.
William A. Hinton (1883-1959) was born on December 15, 1883 in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were both enslaved. He entered Harvard College in 1902 and graduated in 1905. Between undergrad and medical school, Hinton taught at Walden University in…
Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was born in Virginia, his father was enslaved while his mother was a free woman. Delany applied to Harvard Medical School at age 38, and had applied to several medical schools. He was a student of Latin and Greek,…
Alvin Crawford, MD, FACS, graduated cum laude from Tennesse State University in 1960, earning degrees in Chemistry and Music. In 1964, he became the first African American to graduate from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine.
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and Howard Hiatt MD, Taken 19 February 2015 as part of Perspectives of Change, formerly the Equal Access Oral History Project.
Howard H. Hiatt MD was born in Patchogue, New York.…
Oral history and a transcript between Joan Ilacqua and Ernesto Gonzalez-Martinez, MD, Professor of Dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. Taken 10 March 2015 as part of the Equal Access Oral History Project. Topics…
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and J. Emilio Carrillo, MD. Taken 18 July 2017 as part of Perspectives of Change, formerly the Equal Access Oral History Project. J. Emilio Carrillo, MD was born in Cuba and attended…
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and Valerie Montgomery-Rice. Dr. Montgomery-Rice is Dean and President of Morehouse School of Medicine.[Click here to go to full transcript.]
Oral history and a transcript between Joan Ilacqua and Harold May, MD. Taken 9 April 2015 and 11 May 2015 as part of Perspectives of Change, formerly the Equal Access Oral History Project.
Topics include growing up in Peekskils, New York,…
Oral history and a transcript between Joan Ilacqua and Eve j. Higginbotham, SM, MD, Vice Dean of Inclusion and Diversity at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Taken 20 September 2016 as part of Perspectives of Change,…
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA, taken 2 May 2016 as part of Perspectives of Change. Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey is president emerita and former CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and…
Oral history and a transcript between Joan Ilacqua and Lisa Iezzoni, MD. Taken on 10 September 2015 as part of Perspectives of Change: The Story of Civil Rights, Diversity, Inclusion, and Access to Education at HMS and HSDM, formerly the Equal Access…
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and Andre Churchwell, MD.
Andre L. Churchwell, MD, graduated from the Vanderbilt School of Engineering magna cum laude in 1975. He attended Harvard Medical School and earned his…
This document was created and provided by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, describing options and resources available to any member of the Faculty of Arts and Science community who believed that he or…
Oral history and a transcript for an interview between Joan Ilacqua and Augustus A. White III MD, PhD. Dr. White is the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education and Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School…
Oral history and a transcript between Joan Ilacqua and Shirley Marks, MD. Taken 13 March 2017 as part of Perspectives of Change: The Story of Civil Rights, Diversity, Inclusion, and Access to Education at HMS and HSDM. Topics include growing up in…
A inventory (spreadsheet/xls) of the American Dental Association Department of Library Services records created by Center for the History of Medicine staff.Click to download:Inventory to the American Dental Association Department of Library Services…
Surgeon George Hayward performed the second operation employing ether at Massachusetts General Hospital on October 17, 1847, and then the first capital operation—the successful amputation of a leg—later that year. The following year, on April 12th,…
The passage displayed reproduces a letter from Nathan Cooley Keep (1800-1875), recounting the first use of ether anesthesia in labor; the patient was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife, Fanny, who gave birth to a daughter on April 7, 1847.
Jackson issued this publication “to interest both the Surgeon and the Solider, and with the intention of aiding the one and of informing the other” at the outbreak of the Civil War. The Manual provides illustrations and examples of cases from French…
In 1933, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company produced a short silent file, “The Advent of Anesthesia”, depicting the experiments of W. T. G. Morton with ether anesthesia and recreating the first public demonstration of the operation on Gilbert Abbott…
At the request of William T. G. Morton, “to be preserved in perpetual remembrance of the thing,” sixteen physicians--John Collins Warren and Henry Jacob Bigelow among them--with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the ether discovery and its…
Description of the first public demonstration of a surgical operation employing sulphuric ether as an anesthetic, the Morton inhaler, and the imperfect. etherization.