Tarnished Idol: William Thomas Green Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia: A Chronicle of the Ether Controversy (review)

The author of this imposing work of scholarship once resolved that he would never attempt a book about William T. G. Morton or the ether controversy because of the bewildering confusion that had been cast over the discovery of ether anesthesia: "The facts of these matters had become so enclouded and partisan over the years that . . . it seemed tantamount to wading . . . into a vast swamp that soon would suck any investigator into the treacherous and shifting quicksand beneath" (p. 639). Fortunately, he later decided that he had a responsibility to set the record straight.

The tangled threads of this complicated story can be broadly summarized as follows. Horace Wells noticed in 1844 the analgesic qualities of nitrous oxide inhalation at a Hartford demonstration where the exhilarating gas was given to volunteers for entertainment. He successfully used nitrous oxide in his dental practice, and persuaded John Collins Warren, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, to allow him to demonstrate his technique. He wanted to anesthetize a surgical patient, but settled for a tooth extraction when the surgery was postponed. The test failed (perhaps because of an inadequate dosage of the gas) and Wells became deeply discouraged. Boston dentist William Morton, whose interest in using gas for painless dentistry was directly inspired by Wells, experimented with ether inhalation, taking advantage of critically important advice from Charles T. Jackson (a chemist and physician). Morton gave the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia at an operation by Warren at Massachusetts General on 16 October 1846. Henry Jacob Bigelow reported the breakthrough in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on 18 November. Inhalation anesthesia rapidly transformed surgical practices in much of the civilized world. Jackson claimed that he had known about the safety of ether anesthesia since the early 1840s, and that the honor for the discovery should be his. Crawford Long of Georgia came forward with evidence that he had performed operations using ether since 1842, but had never announced his accomplishment in the medical literature. A seemingly endless sequence of articles, pamphlets, testimonies, petitions, and patent applications served as ammunition in a bitter contest for recognition. Particularly acrimonious was the twenty-year battle between Morton and Jackson.

Richard J. Wolfe does a commendable job of sorting out facts and identifying misinformation. He concludes that the rascally Morton was an unscrupulous opportunist; the brilliant but irascible Jackson was unfairly maligned; and the unfortunate Wells, whose disappointment seems to have ruined his career, deserves the lion's share of credit. Wolfe is in general agreement with William Osler, whom he quotes: "In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs" (p. 542). He believes, however, that Morton's role was of secondary importance because of the extensive guidance and expertise provided to him by Wells and Jackson (p. 542). Much of the existing obfuscation resulted from Morton's deliberate attempts to bolster his claims by distorting the record (pp. 62, 544, and passim). Curiously, Wolfe has chosen to include every unsavory allegation about Morton's character, but nowhere mentions the memorable and disturbing fact that Wells's 1848 suicide in a New York jail was preceded by his arrest for throwing sulfuric acid on a dozen women.

There is more here than most readers will want to know about who supported whose claim, and the precise chronology of articles...