MEDICINE IN AMERICA 415 



through the door. They seized him and while he fought and 

 struggled, etherized him into insensibility. He fell into such a 

 deep quiet sleep that they, being frightened, called in Dr. Long. 

 The victim soon came to his senses. In the next year the lad 

 who had Ijeen chiefly concerned in the above exploit took up 

 the study of medicine with Dr. Long. The two in talking over 

 the action of ether determined to try it in a suitable surgical 

 case, and did so on March 30, 1842. On that date Long took a 

 small cystic tumor from the jaw of John M. Venables and the 

 patient declared that he felt no pain. 



Long failed to appreciate the importance of his discovery 

 and did nothing for many years to inform a suffering world, 

 though his claims were admitted publicly in 1861 l^y Charles 

 T. Jackson. In December, 1844, a wandering lecturer gave 

 a public exhibition of nitrous oxide gas in Hartford as an an- 

 esthetic, and Horace Wells, a young dentist, who was in the 

 audience was greatly impressed with the possibilities of the 

 new medicine. So the next day he had Colton, the lecturer, 

 administer it to himself when a brother dentist extracted one 

 of his teeth. Wells exclaimed, on coming to himself, "It is the 

 greatest discovery ever made; I did not feel so much as the 

 prick of a pin." 



Wells then began using the gas as an anesthetic, and 

 looking about for some similar drug, his attention was called 

 to sulphuric ether. One of his associates, a physician, E. E. 

 Marcy, used the latter at Wells's suggestion, in removing a wen 

 of the scalp. Valentine Mott heard of this and referred to it in 

 an article in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, June 

 15th, 1845, the earliest American pul^lication on the subject. 

 Its use was not persevered in, however, as it was thought too 

 dangerous. William T. G. Morton, a dentist in Boston, entered 

 his name in the office of Dr. Charles T Jackson in 1844, as a 

 student of medicine. Through former association with Wells 

 he was familiar with his experiments with nitrous oxide and 

 ether. He was destined to bring ether to the notice of the 

 scientific world, and a student of his own, Thomas R. Spear, Jr., 

 was able to furnish him the needed stimulus to the discovery. 

 Spear related to Morton how he had amused and exhilarated 

 himself by the inhalation of ether as a school boy. Morton 



