314 SURGERY 



returned to consciousness, he cried out in his enthusiasm, "a new era 

 has dawned upon the world, I did not feel it more than a pin-prick," 

 and Horace Wells was a greater prophet than ever he dreamed him- 

 self to be in the moment of wild excitement. 



In 1844, William Morton, a Boston dentist, heard that sulfuric 

 ether could be inhaled in small quantities, and that it produced a 

 certain degree of unconsciousness. Like Wells, Morton immediately 

 tried the experiment upon himself, a daring thing to do. After inhal- 

 ing the ether he became insensible for eight minutes. The moment 

 he came to himself, the thought flashed through his mind that in 

 ether was a vapor which would produce insensibility for a longer 

 period than gas, and that here was an anesthetic peculiarly suitable 

 for surgical work. Accordingly, he sought his opportunity. It came 

 on October 16, 1846, a red-letter day in the history of surgery, not 

 only in America, but throughout the world. That day Morton 

 administered ether to a patient in the Massachusetts General Hos- 

 pital, in Boston, who was to be operated upon by Warren for the 

 removal of a vascular tumor. Under the influence of ether the patient 

 remained unconscious during the operation, which was highly suc- 

 cessful. To be sure Crawford W. Long had administered ether prior 

 to this time, but Long did not quite trust the evidence of his own 

 experiment, and feared that his success might be due to an incidental 

 hypnotic influence. The work of Jackson should also be mentioned, 

 since as a chemist he made ether; but it was Morton who really 

 proclaimed the discovery of anesthesia in an emphatic way, so as 

 to arrest universal attention, and introduce a new epoch in surgical 

 science. 



November, 1847, was another red-letter day in the progress of 

 surgery, for on that day Simpson, the famous Scotchman, made 

 announcement of chloroform as a valuable anesthetic. 



One of the most memorable nights in the history of the world was 

 when Simpson resolved to try personally the inhalation of chloro- 

 form. Sitting with his friends, Duncan and Keith, around a supper- 

 table, he proposed a trial of the experiment. The three men, without 

 the slightest adequate knowledge of what the result would be, 

 inhaled the vapor. It was a brave, hazardous thing to do; but they 

 did it. Almost instantly their conversation sparkled with unwonted 

 scintillations of wit and humor; but it suddenly ceased, and a death- 

 like silence reigned in the room. In a few moments the sound of 

 falling bodies might have been heard; and then again all was silent. 

 Simpson was the first to recover consciousness. He says that when 

 he did so, he heard himself saying: "That is good." Then he saw 

 Duncan lying on the floor, sound asleep and snoring; while Keith 

 was struggling to regain the chair from which he had fallen when 

 the chloroform did its work. 



