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.

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    he thus voluntarily and knowingly have incurred such imminent risk of miscarriage! As well believe that Columbus would have suggested and relinquished to a common sailor the attempt to discover his new world! * Contrast for one moment his conduct during these five years with his proceedings afterwards. The discovery is no sooner promulgated, and its importance recognized, than his ardent, impulsive character, and his thirst for reputation and popular applause, at once display themselves. The discovery is his own — wholly — exclusively — no partnership in it with Dr. Morton. He is to have no participation in the credit which it brings — “ not even to the extent of the paring of a finger nail.” Through private and through ofiicial channels, in conversation and by the press. Dr. Jackson communicates his discovery, and claims for himself the gratitude of mankind. With what face, however, can he now appeal either to the friends of science or of hu¬ manity, after the folly and the heartlessness involved in this five years’ delay \ What are his claims to gratitude who has proved himself so long utterly insensible to the dictates of nature and the sufierings of the world \ In alleging that he made this discovery in 1842, Dr. Jack- son seeks, as it seems to me, to vindicate his scientific claims at the expense alike of his character and his understanding; — and this although his entire recent * Dr. Jackson has compared himself, in this matter, to Columbus ; and his friends have done so likewise in previous publications. I was not surprised, therefore, to find that the writers of the “ Defence ” recognize in Dr. Jackson, Columbus ; and in Dr. Morton merely the sailor who first shouted “ land ” from the mast-head. I would suggest, as a truer estimate of their relative positions in regard to this discovery, that Dr. Morton was the energetic commander of a vessel, — somew^hat deficient, it may be, in nautical science ; and Dr. Jackson, a skilful pilot, summoned when the voyage was just at its close, by whose aid the vessel was brought safely into port; where it would, in all probabihty, have arrived 'v\dthout that aid.