The ether controversy. Vindication of the [Massachusetts General] Hospital report of 1848 / By N.I. Bowditch.

  • Bowditch, N. I. (Nathaniel Ingersoll), 1805-1861.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ether controversy. Vindication of the [Massachusetts General] Hospital report of 1848 / By N.I. Bowditch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/38 (page 15)
    idea of generalizing and extending the discovery was of course perfectly obvious; and (even if we disbelieve the testimony of Dr. Hayden, that Dr. Morton had already decided to go to the Hospital) Dr. Jackson can hardly claim much merely from such a suggestion. The re¬ luctance testified to, as manifested by Dr. Morton to Dr. Jackson with regard to going to the Hospital, I suppose indeed to have been part of his system of concealment. It was a reluctance to go there as the agent of another. He was unwilling probably to accede to this suggestion, lest he should be deprived by Dr. Jackson of all credit which might result from taking this step. But what is Dr. Jackson’s actual relation to the Hospital in this matter? He sends to the surgeons of this institution an agent whom he avowedly regards as ignorant and reckless. He does not trouble himself to call personally upon any one of these surgeons to give them a word of caution or advice, though all six of them live within five minutes’ walk of his house.* For many successive weeks, he does not go once to the Hospital to see these operations, though absent from the city only during a brief period as stated in the Report. And, when at last he con¬ cludes to do so, Mr. Burnett sees him at his office, and is informed by him that he is going to take a bag of oxygen to the Hospital, as he thinks Morton will pro¬ bably kill somebody yet with the ether, before he has done. All this, surely, is a singular mode of manifesting his interest in, and promoting the success of, these Hos¬ pital operations. During the same period. Dr. Morton is not the reluctant agent of another. He acts for him¬ self While, on the one hand, it would be difficult to exaggerate the degree of indifference shown by Dr. Jack- * A casual interview with. Dr. Warren, after the two first operations, forms no exception to the truth of this remark.