{"id":15910,"date":"2019-03-31T21:32:22","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T21:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15910"},"modified":"2019-04-01T00:23:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T00:23:24","slug":"the-surprising-and-long-story-of-the-first-use-of-ether-in-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-surprising-and-long-story-of-the-first-use-of-ether-in-surgery\/","title":{"rendered":"The surprising (and Long) story of the first use of ether in surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger K. Thomas<\/a>, University of Georgia<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the small town of Jefferson, Georgia, about 20 miles from the University of Georgia in Athens, a 26-year-old physician named Crawford Williamson Long removed a tumor from the neck of a man named James Venable while Venable was anesthesized with ether. The date was March 30, 1842. <\/p>\n

More than four years later, in Boston, Massachusetts, on Oct. 16, 1846, Thomas Morton<\/a>, a dentist using ether, served as anesthesiologist while Dr. John Warren, a surgeon at Boston\u2019s Massachusetts General Hospital, performed surgery on a patient\u2019s neck. <\/p>\n

A physician observer rushed the news to local newspapers and medical journals, and thus history was written \u2013 inaccurately.<\/p>\n

For years, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston\u2019s storied hospital that is Harvard\u2019s main teaching hospital, has featured \u201cthe Ether Dome<\/a>,\u201d the site of what many believed was the first surgery using ether. A donor provided money to the city of Boston to erect an \u201cEther Monument<\/a>,\u201d which was installed in 1868. And for years, medical historians credited Morton with the accomplishment of being the first person to use ether to anesthetize a patient.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t true. Crawford Long deserved the credit.<\/p>\n

Morton toiled unsuccessfully for years to get the U.S. Congress to recognize his \u201cdiscovery\u201d and grant him a monetary award. He tried to disguise his ether with odorants and coloring agent, even naming it \u201cLetheon<\/a>,\u201d after the river in Greek mythology believed to induce forgetfulness, in his unsuccessful effort to patent it. \u201cLetheon\u201d was quickly identified as ether, which was in the public domain. <\/p>\n

I became interested in the story of Long and ether while I was teaching \u201cHistory of Psychology\u201d in a building at the University of Georgia that bore a plaque commemorating Long\u2019s discovery of anesthetic ether. The textbook I was using did not mention Long but credited Thomas Morton of Boston. Naturally, that aroused my curiosity, and I have been interested in Long ever since<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While most academics are well aware of the warning to publish or perish, you could say that Long\u2019s case was an example of publish or almost relinquish your place in history. Long delayed publication for seven years for what he considered to be very good reasons, but by delaying, he gave Morton a chance to try to steal his priority. <\/p>\n

A painful procedure<\/h2>\n

In the early 19th century, there were few options for pain-free surgery. Mesmerism<\/a>, or hypnosis, was used, and some medical schools offered instruction for inducing mesmerism. However, mesmerism was considered unreliable.<\/p>\n

The discovery of something to prevent horrible pain during surgery was thus hailed as almost a medical miracle.<\/p>\n

After Long earned his degree<\/a> at the University of Georgia, he apprenticed in medicine with Dr. George Grant in Jefferson. Long then studied medicine at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and at the University of Pennsylvania. After gaining further surgical experience in New York City, Long considered joining the U.S. Navy as a surgeon. However, his father persuaded him to return to Georgia, and Long purchased Dr. Grant\u2019s practice in Jefferson.<\/p>\n

Long got the idea to use ether in 1842, and Venable was likely convinced to try it, because both had participated in the recreational use<\/a> of ether in what was known at the time as \u201cether frolics.\u201d The frolics, which were socially acceptable even for the physicians and pharmacists who provided the ether, involved inhalation of ether, but not to the extent of unconsciousness. Long observed that he had falls and blows during ether frolics without the pains that were likely when one had not inhaled ether. <\/p>\n

Long\u2019s surgery on Venable was successful, but he delayed publication in the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal<\/a> until 1849.<\/p>\n

Yet medical historians, some as recently as the 1990s, diminished Long\u2019s discovery. Some historians even suggested wrongly that Long did not realize the significance of what he had done.<\/p>\n

In 1912, famed physician Sir William Osler<\/a>, credited with helping to create modern medical education practices, wrote<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\u201cLong of Georgia made patients inhale the vapor until anesthetic and
\nhad performed operations upon them in his state, but it was not until October 16, 1846, in the Massachusetts General Hospital, that Morton in a public operating room, rendered a patient insensible with ether and demonstrated the utility of surgical anesthesia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1997, V. C. Saied wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is significant that Dr. Crawford Long of Jefferson, Georgia\u2026had been using ether anesthesia in 1842, 4 years before Morton\u2019s public demonstration\u2026However, his (Long) keeping it isolated\u2026and failing to promote ether as anesthesia only prolonged worldwide suffering.\u201d <\/p>\n

Long\u2019s seven-year delay in publishing, apparently, biased the historians. When he finally did publish in 1849, Long wrote that he had not wanted to inflict possible misinformation upon the world if he was wrong about ether. <\/p>\n

He cited three reasons for his delay. <\/p>\n

First, he noted although he was not a believer in mesmerism, he needed more cases to ensure that somehow the patient had not self-mesmerized. In his small country practice, it took several years to accumulate sufficient evidence. <\/p>\n

Second, when Long read of Morton\u2019s claim of first use of ether, he felt it was prudent to see if other claims would be forthcoming that predated his. <\/p>\n

Third, he finally accumulated enough cases, including controls. In one case, three tumors were removed from a patient on the same day. Tumors one and three were removed without ether, and tumor two with ether. Only the removal of tumor two was painless.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Long amputated two fingers from a boy on the same day, one with and one without ether, and only the amputation with ether was painless.<\/p>\n

Long also reported a few other cases before 1849 where surgery involving ether was pain free.<\/p>\n

Above it all<\/h2>\n

In 1846, when Morton administered ether to the patient at Massachusetts General Hospital, the surgical theater was on the top of the building under a glass-covered dome for its optimal lighting. Today, MGH maintains the \u201cEther Dome\u201d as a museum, saying that it was the site of the \u201cfirst public demonstration\u201d of anesthetic ether. There is also a monument in Boston\u2019s Public Garden, on one side of which is the inscription, \u201cTo commemorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility to pain. First proved at Mass. General Hospital in Boston October AD MDCCCXLVI.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n The Ether Monument in Boston\u2019s Public Garden.<\/span>
\n Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The claim on the monument is untrue, but it\u2019s hard to change something carved in granite. I also question Mass. General\u2019s claim for the \u201cfirst public demonstration\u201d of the use of anesthetic ether. Long\u2019s use of anesthetic ether in 1842 was conducted in his public access office, and he had six witnesses. Regardless of any controversy, Friedman\u2019s and Frieldland\u2019s Medicines 10 Greatest Discoveries (1998), Chapter 5 is \u201cCrawford Long and Surgical Anesthesia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its early days, the monument raised controversy.<\/p>\n

Morton and his chemist, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, had long argued over credit for the discovery, with Jackson denouncing Morton<\/a> as a \u201cswindler.\u201d Morton even refused half of a 5,000-franc prize<\/a> from the French Academy of Medicine awarded jointly to him and Jackson because he insisted the award was his alone. <\/p>\n

Mark Twain and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes<\/a> weighed in on the matter, with Holmes writing that the monument was to \u201cether or either.\u201d Twain opposed Morton\u2019s claims, writing that \u201cthe monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Roger K. Thomas<\/a>, Professor Emeritus, Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Georgia<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger K. Thomas, University of Georgia In the small town of Jefferson, Georgia, about 20 miles from the University of Georgia in Athens, a 26-year-old physician named Crawford Williamson Long removed a tumor from the neck of a man named James Venable while Venable was anesthesized with ether. The date was March 30, 1842. More […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42],"tags":[6115,6114,6113],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15911,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions\/15911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}