432 CHARLES THOMAS JACKSON. 



results are embodied in these reports, was all finished before 1849 ; 

 and it is obvious, therefore, that it ought not to be judged by the 

 standard of a more advanced science. It was a most important work 

 for the time, and greatly helped to develop the mineral resources of 

 the country. 



This necessarily imperfect account of Doctor Jackson's scientific 

 work forms a most worthy record : and we would that our notice of 

 his life might end here ; for the unfortunate controversy which over- 

 shadowed his later years brought only sorrow and disappointment to 

 him, and diverted attention from the valuable services he had rendered 

 to industrial science. The discovery of anassthesia, like the discovery 

 of printing, was too great a gift for any one man to confer on his race. 

 That Doctor Jackson suggested the use of ether for producing insen- 

 sibility to pain, and that this suggestion was based on previous expe- 

 rience, seems unquestionable. But it was not a suggestion, however 

 fruitful ; not an unimproved experience, however important ; not a 

 rash experiment, though called courageous when successful : but the 

 careful and cautious investigation of the conditions of success and the 

 limits of safety, that constituted the great gift for which mankind 

 should be grateful. The monument erected on the Public Garden in 

 Boston, in honor of the discovery of ansesthesia, by blazoning no man's 

 name, implicitly records the verdict in which most thinking men ac- 

 quiesce ; and the one great lesson which the " Ether Controversy " 

 should teach is that for such great gifts, not to man, but to God, belongs 

 all the glory. 



It is, however, a painful fact that Doctor Jackson honestly believed 

 himself entitled to the whole honor of the discovery of ansesthesia, and 

 that his later years were embittered by what he regarded as the injus- 

 tice and ingratitude of his contemporaries. His unsuccessful efforts 

 to obtain a recognition of his claims ; the engrossment of mind, anxiety, 

 suffering, and disappointment, occasioned by the controversy, — led 

 finally to insanity, which separated him from his family and friends sev- 

 eral years ago; and when, on the 29th of August last, the news came 

 that the troubled spirit was at length at rest, the survivors of those 

 friends whom his bright intellect had drawn around him in his early 

 manhood felt that a long night of mourning had passed. 



