CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE 



months after that initial operation at the Boston Hos- 

 pital in 1846, ether had made good its conquest of pain 

 throughout the civilized world. Only by the most ac- 

 tive use of the imagination can we of this present day 

 realize the full meaning of that victory. 



It remains to be added that in the subsequent bicker- 

 ings over the discovery such bickerings as follow every 

 great advance two other names came into prominent 

 notice as sharers in the glory of the new method. Both 

 these were Americans the one, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, 

 of Boston ; the other, Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Ala- 

 bama. As to Dr. Jackson, it is sufficient to say that he 

 seems to have had some vague inkling of the peculiar 

 properties of ether before Morton's discovery. He even 

 suggested the use of this drug to Morton, not knowing 

 that Morton had already tried it ; but this is the full 

 measure of his association with the discovery. Hence it 

 is clear that Jackson's claim to equal share with Mor- 

 ton in the discovery was unwarranted, not to say ab- 

 surd. 



Dr. Long's association with the matter was far differ- 

 ent, and altogether honorable. By one of those coinci- 

 dences so common in the history of discovery, he was 

 experimenting with ether as a pain-destroyer simulta- 

 neously with Morton, though neither so much as knew 

 of the existence of the other. While a medical student 

 he had once inhaled ether for the intoxicant effects, as 

 other medical students were wont to do, and when par- 

 tially under influence of the drug he had noticed that a 

 chance blow to his shins was painless. This gave him. 

 the idea that ether might be used in surgical operations; 

 and in subsequent years, in the course of his practice in 

 a small Georgia town, he put the idea into successful 



373 



