The invention of anæsthetic inhalation, or, "Discovery of anæsthesia." / by William J. Morton.

  • Morton, William J. (William James), 1846-1920.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The invention of anæsthetic inhalation, or, "Discovery of anæsthesia." / by William J. Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in themselves disprove that there was any harmony of action between Jackson and Morton. He denounced Morton, and disclaimed any connection with the use of ether. There is not a scintilla of evidence to prove that Morton worked under Jackson’s directions. The latter was not even aware that Dr. Morton had asked Dr. Warren for a public test; much less had he suggested this course. This “ nurse theory” is proven by a most overwhelming mass of evidence to be a fabrication. At a later period, when the subject of a patent was mooted, Dr. Jackson’s name was inserted in it, in deference to his strenuous claims, and to secure him the payment of the five hundred dollars which he charged for his unnecessary piece of advice when he said “ try ether.” Of this patent we will speak further on. Dr. Wells’s claims briefly analyzed. We will take less time with Dr. Wells’s claim. He ad¬ vanced upon the hypothesis of Jackson—the hypothesis in fact of the long line of experimenters, both ancient and modern, but most clearly expressed by Sir Humphry Davy, in 1800, and made the attempt to establish a method of painless surgery. His first statement, made some months after Dr. Morton’s an¬ nouncement, was that he had used nitrous oxide gas in “ twelve or fifteen ” cases of extraction of teeth in 1844. We will not enter into particulars. The final answer to him is that he established nothing, left nothing behind him, as a re¬ sult of his experiments. More than this, he himself absolute¬ ly abandoned his researches for two years, or until the events of 1846 reminded him of what he had lost. And when at this date Dr. Morton wrote him of his success, instead of replying as the true discoverer would have done, “But, Dr. Morton, there is nothing new in what you write—I myself found this out two years ago,” he writes : “ If the operation of admin¬ istering the gas is not attended with too much trouble, and will produce the effect you state etc. How the “ effect ” Dr. Morton stated was exactly what Dr. Wells saw fit some months later to claim as his discovery. This letter, still pre¬ served, is in itself fatal to Wells’s claim. Many, in short, had used anaesthetics as effectually as Wells did in 1844, and, fol-