By Moises Menendez, MD, FACS

William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868)

William Thomas Morton was an American dentist who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic in 1846. The promotion of his questionable claim to have been the discoverer of anesthesia became an obsession for the rest of his life. Of all milestones and achievements in medicine, conquering pain must be one of the very few that has potentially affected every human being in the world. It was in 1846 when one of mankind’s greatest fears, the pain of surgery, was eliminated.

In the autumn of 1844, Dr. Morton entered Harvard Medical School and attended the chemistry lectures of Charles T. Jackson, who introduced Dr. Morton to the anesthetic properties of ether. Dr. Morton then left Harvard without graduating. On Sept. 30, 1846, he performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient. Upon reading a favorable newspaper account of this event, Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow arranged for a now-famous demonstration of ether on Oct. 16, 1846, in the OR of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). At this demonstration, John Collins Warren painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of Edward Gilbert Abbott.

News of this use of ether spread rapidly around the world, and the first recorded use of ether outside the United Sates took place in London, by dentist James Robinson in a tooth extraction at the home of Francis Boote, an American doctor who had heard of Drs. Morton’s and Bigelow’s demonstrations. The MGH OR became known as the Ether Dome, and has been preserved as a monument to this historic event. Following the demonstration, Dr. Morton tried to hide the identity of the substance Mr. Abbott had inhaled, by referring to it as “Letheon,” but it soon was found to be ether.

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William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868)
Work was done on a Canford gray paper, 11×15, using panpastel, charcoal pencils and white chalks.
Artist: Moises Menendez, MD, FACS

Dr. Morton had single-handedly proven to the world that ether is a gas that, when inhaled in the proper dose, provided safe and effective anesthesia.

Dr. Morton was in New York City in July 1868. He was riding in a carriage with his wife when he suddenly demanded the carriage to stop, and he ran into the lake in Central Park “to cool off.” This peculiar behavior was attributed to a major stroke (cerebrovascular accident) that he had suffered, which proved fatal soon after.

Dr. Morton was taken to nearby St. Luke’s Hospital. It is reported by his wife that upon recognizing Dr. Morton, the chief surgeon made the following remark to his students: “Young gentlemen, you see lying before you a man who has done more for humanity and for the relief of suffering than any man who has ever lived.”

Sources

  • Fitzharris L. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. Farrar, Straus and Grious; 2018:1-304.
  • Hollingham R. Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery. St. Martin’s Press; 2009:11, 62.
  • Robinson DH, Toledo AH. Historical development of modern anesthesia. J Invest Surg. 2012;25(3):141-149.
  • William T.G. Morton. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ William_T._G._Morton

Dr. Menendez is a general surgeon and self-taught portrait artist in Magnolia, Ark. Since 2012, he has completed a series of portraits of historical figures, particularly well-known physicians and surgeons.

This article is from the May 2021 print issue.