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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 57.3 (2002) 361-362



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Book Review

Tarnished Idol:
William T. G. Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia


Richard J. Wolfe. Tarnished Idol: William T. G. Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia. San Anselmo, California, Norman Publishing, 2001. 672 pp. $125.00

I doubt that many of my fellow undergraduates at New York University in the 1950s questioned the evidence before our eyes that surgical anesthesia was discovered by one of the greatest medical innovators our nation has produced, William Thomas Green Morton. We walked past his marble bust every day, exhibited in the beautifully arching colonnade internationally known as the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, the most celebrated feature of our ivied campus. We would have been even more impressed had we known that the electors to the hall had given Morton a whopping 72 votes, the same number as Mark Twain.

And yet this is the very Morton of whom a physician contemporary wrote, “he is the only thoroughly reckless and bad man with whom I have ever come in contact” (p. 169). Perhaps more to the point is Richard J. Wolfe’s summation in the final paragraph of 640 pages of text and documentation accounting the inappropriateness of the honors bestowed on this thoroughly scurrilous and undeserving “Great American.” Wolfe tells his readers that “the evidence clearly discloses how unworthy and unprepared Morton was when, unwittingly, by some macabre twist of fate, he was chosen to be the instrument for ushering in one of the greatest medical innovations of all time” (p. 640).

Those who stay with the author through the entire proof of this meticulously supported thesis (and there will be many such readers, because Morton’s unsavory machinations and Wolfe’s attractive style make for an absorbing combination, despite the microscopic detail in which the tale unfolds) will discover that the putative hero of the ether story was, in fact, a swindler, forger, thief, liar, and imposter. He had neither the skills, insight, nor intellect to have made the great discovery on his own. Were he not the self-serving and dishonest beneficiary of the talents of Horace Wells and Charles Jackson, his role in the so-called ether controversy would have been far less heralded, and credit properly bestowed elsewhere.

It is Wolfe’s contention that the most important reason for which historians have until now given so much credence to Morton’s claims was the publication in 1856 of Nathan P. Rice’s notoriously hagiographic Trials of a Public Benefactor, which has been widely used as a reliable secondary source by scholars who should know better. Written essentially to Morton’s order, the book diminished the role played by Wells and Jackson, played fast and loose with facts, and left the reader believing that Morton’s interest in [End Page 361] developing surgical anesthesia was utterly selfless, whereas the truth was quite the opposite.

Another significant factor in Morton’s emergence as the hero of the piece was the self-interest of the authorities at the Massachusetts General Hospital, particularly two of its most prominent lights, Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch and Henry J. Bigelow. Having been present at Morton’s first demonstrations, they became invested in the legend of that momentous event of 16 October 1846 and in the glory it brought to the institution with which they were so prominently identified. The hospital’s later investigation of the various claims to priority, Wolfe asserts, was therefore hardly impartial—he calls it “politically motivated” (p. 165)—and its outcome in favor of Morton virtually predictable.

For these reasons and a concatenation of others, the myth has persisted and the truth been hidden or forgotten. Wolfe has provided the long-needed corrective, and he has done so in such a scrupulously convincing way that readers will wonder why at least some of these facts have never been brought to attention in the past, despite the disquieting undercurrent of persistent reservations about both...

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