ON ANAESTHETICS 
[Holmes’s System of Surgery, vol. ii, third edition. London, 1883.] 
PART I. WRITTEN 1861 
To prevent or diminish pain in surgical operations is an object so desirable, 
that many in various ages in the history of Medicine have sought to attain it, 
either by means of narcotic drugs designed to act on the body generally, or by 
compressing or otherwise locally affecting the nerves of the part concerned. 
The first really valuable suggestion, however, was made in the year 1800 
by Sir Humphrey Davy, who, having himself experienced relief from pain when 
breathing nitrous oxide gas, threw out the hint that it might probably be em- 
ployed with advantage to produce a similar effect in surgical practice. 
The same idea occurred, after the lapse of nearly half a century, to Dr. 
Horace Wells, a dentist in Hartford, Connecticut, who, in 1844, underwent the 
extraction of a tooth without pain after inhaling the gas, and gave it with satis- 
factory results to several of his patients ; but he soon after found the practice 
so uncertain that he abandoned it entirely.® 
About the same period Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, in America, who 
had previously been a partner with Wells, but did not, as he informs us, receive 
any suggestion from him, became possessed with the desire of discovering an 
efficient anaesthetic, and commenced a series of experiments upon himself and 
the lower animals, which at last resulted in his extracting a tooth painlessly 
from a patient to whom he had administered the vapour of sulphuric ether by 
inhalation. This was on September 30, 1846.4 Soon afterwards he publicly 
exhibited his method at the Massachusetts General Hospital; and thence- 
forward anaesthesia in surgery was an established blessing to mankind. 
Sulphuric ether is still extensively used as an anaesthetic in America, 
but in Europe chloroform is generally preferred to it. Disguised under the 
name ‘ chloric ether’, in which it exists diluted with spirit of wine, this agent 
was the subject of Dr. Morton’s first experiment upon himself ;° and it was 
 ] 
1 For much curious information regarding the history of this subject the reader is referred to the 
work of the late Dr. Snow on Anaesthetics. 
* Chemical Researches, p. 556. 
® Statements of William T.G. Morton, M.D., on his Claim to the Discovery of the Anaesthetic Pro- 
perties of Ether, &c. Washington, 1853, pp. 42 et seq. 
* Dr. Morton’s Statements, &c., pp. 45 et seq. * ODA. Cltig, Pps 4554405 
