360Ether anaesthesia is shown in public for the first time
On 16 October 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the dentist William Morton gave a patient ether before the surgeon John Collins Warren removed a tumour from his neck. The patient felt no pain. The public demonstration spread anaesthesia around the world within months and made modern surgery possible.
Before the 1840s, surgery was done on conscious patients. Operations had to be fast, and many people refused treatment out of fear of the pain.
On 16 October 1846, in an operating theatre at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the dentist William T. G. Morton held a glass inhaler of ether vapour to the face of a patient, Edward Gilbert Abbott. The surgeon John Collins Warren then removed a tumour from Abbott's neck.
Abbott stayed still and later said he had felt no pain. Warren told the watching doctors: 'Gentlemen, this is no humbug.' The room, now known as the Ether Dome, is preserved at the hospital.
News crossed the Atlantic quickly. By December 1846, surgeons in London were using ether, and in 1847 the Scottish doctor James Young Simpson introduced chloroform.
Anaesthesia allowed surgeons to work slowly and carefully, and, together with antiseptic methods later in the century, it made long and complex operations possible. The date is still marked as World Anaesthesia Day.
- 1842
- Crawford Long uses ether in an operation in Georgia, without publishing
- 16 October 1846
- Public demonstration of ether in Boston
- December 1846
- Ether is first used in Britain
- 1847
- Chloroform is introduced
Sources: Massachusetts General Hospital · Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology · Britannica.