A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



suits. This friend was another dentist, Dr. W. T. G. 

 Morton, of Boston, then a young man full of youthful 

 energy and enthusiasm. He seems to have felt that 

 the drug with which Wells had experimented was not 

 the most practicable one for the purpose, and so for 

 several months he experimented with other allied 

 drugs, until finally he hit upon sulphuric ether, and with 

 this was able to make experiments upon animals, and 

 then upon patients in the dental chair, that seemed to 

 him absolutely demonstrative. 



Full of eager enthusiasm, and absolutely confident of 

 his results, he at once went to Dr. J. C. Warren, one of 

 the foremost surgeons of Boston, and asked permission 

 to test his discovery decisively on one of the patients 

 at the Boston Hospital during a severe operation. The 

 request was granted ; the test was made on October 16, 

 1846, in the presence of several of the foremost surgeons 

 of the city and of a body of medical students. The 

 patient slept quietly while the surgeon's knife was plied, 

 and awoke to astonished comprehension that the ordeal 

 was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had been 

 accomplished. 5 



Swiftly as steam could carry it slowly enough we 

 should think it to-day the news was heralded to all 

 the world. It was received in Europe with incredu- 

 lity, which vanished before repeated experiments. Sur- 

 geons were loath to believe that ether, a drug that had 

 long held a place in the subordinate armamentarium of 

 the physician, could accomplish such a miracle. But 

 scepticism vanished before the tests which any surgeon 

 might make, and which surgeons all over the world did 

 make within the next few weeks. Then there came a 



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