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James Robinson's Ether Inhaler
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…
Photographs of Early Ether Anesthesia 0perations at Massachusetts General Hospital
Reproductions of daguerreotypes of early operations employing ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"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"
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."
Morton-type ether inhaler with sponge and presentation inscription from T. G. Morton to J. Mason Warren.
Photograph of Morton-type ether inhaler with sponge and presentation inscription from T. G. Morton to J. Mason Warren.
Newspaper announcement of the first operation under ether anesthesia.
First announcement of the surgical operation using ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Photograph of W. T. G. Morton.
Photograph of W. T. G. Morton.
Report of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Presented to the Corporation, at their Annual Meeting, January 26, 1848.
Conclusions of a committee inquiring into the claims of W. T. G. Morton and Charles T. Jackson over the credit for the discovery of ether anesthesia.
Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation
Article from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal describing first surgical operations using ether anesthesia.
Invitation to the Semi-Centennial of Anaesthesia Celebration
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.
Crawford W. Long, M.D. Discoverer of anaesthesia demonstrated on James M. Venables by the use of sulphuric ether at Jefferson, Jackson Co., Georgia, March 30th, 1842
An engraving of Crawford W. Long.
Unsuccessful cases of anesthesia by ether inhalation
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,…
Charles T. Jackson Communicates the Ether Discovery
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…
Photographs from "The Advent of Anesthesia" Film
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…
Self-Portrait in the Form of a Silhouette.
1 framed silhouette of Horace Wells.
Photograph of Charles T. Jackson.
Photograph of Charles T. Jackson.
Photograph of W. T. G. Morton.
Photograph of W. T. G. Morton.
Responses to the Interrogatories of R. H. Dana
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 Gilbert Abbott Operation at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Description of the first public demonstration of a surgical operation employing sulphuric ether as an anesthetic, the Morton inhaler, and the imperfect. etherization.
Subscription list for the Morton Testimonial Association
Subscription list to raise funds for support of W. T. G. Morton and his family.
Testimonies of Medical Students at Harvard to Horace Wells' Demonstration
Testimonial letters of William M. Cornell and Mason M. Miles in defense of Horace Wells.
Horace Wells' Demonstration of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School
Describes Wells' unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate anesthesia using nitrous oxide at Harvard in December 1844.
A. L. Peirson letter to W. T. G. Morton, 1847
Copy of a letter addressed to Morton, describing Peirson's successful surgical amputations employing ether anesthesia.
George Hayward
Dr. George Hayward was Harvard's first professor of the principles of surgery and clinical surgery. In 1846, he performed the second public surgical operation utilizing ether anesthesia, and then the first major amputation.
In addition to being a…
Etherization, with Surgical Remarks
Following the first public operation with ether anesthesia, Dr. John Collins Warren began to assemble data from over 200 surgical cases to promote the discovery, hoping to change "the slow progress of the practice of etherization in this country…
Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation
On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. John Collins Warren performed the first public operation on a patient under ether anesthesia administered by dentist William T. G. Morton. Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow witnessed the event and…