37. WILLIAM T. G. MORTON
1819-1868.
The name of William Thomas Green
Morton may not ring a bell in the minds of most readers. He was, however, a far
more influential person than many more famous men, for Morton was the man principally responsible for the introduction of the use of anesthesia in
surgery.
Few
inventions in all of history are so highly valued by individual human beings as anesthetics, and few have made as profound
a difference in the human condition. The grimness of surgery in the days when a
patient had to be awake while a surgeon sawed through his bones is frightful to
contemplate.The ability to put an end to this kind of pain is certainly one of
the greatest gifts that any man ever gave to his fellows.
Morton was born in 1819, in Charlton, Massachusetts. As a young man, he studied at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. In 1842, he began the practice of
dentistry. For a while, in 1842 and
1843, he was the partner of Horace Wells, a slightly older dentist who was himself interested in
anesthesia. It seems, however, that their partnership was not
profitable, and it ended in late 1843.
In his own dental practice, Morton
specialized in
fitting people for artificial
teeth. To do this properly, it was necessary to extract the roots of the old teeth first. Such extraction, in the days
before anesthesia, was extremely painful, and the desirability of some means of anesthesia was apparent. Morton
correctly judged that nitrous oxide would not be sufficiently effective
for his purposes, and he searched for a more powerful agent.
Charles T. Jackson, a learned doctor
and scientist whom Morton knew, suggested that he try using ether. That ether
had anesthetic properties had been discovered more than three hundred years earlier by Paracelsus, a famous Swiss physician and alchemist; one or two
similar reports had also been printed during
the first part of the nineteenth century. But neither Jackson, nor any
of the persons who had written about ether, had ever used the chemical in a
surgical operation.
Ether sounded like a promising
possibility to Morton, and he experimented with it, first on animals (including
his pet dog) and then on himself. Finally, on September 30, 1846, a perfect
opportunity arose for testing ether on a patient. A man named Eben Frost walked
into Morton's office with a terrible toothache and a willingness to try anything which might relieve the pain of
the necessary extraction. Morton administered ether to him and then pulled his
tooth. When Frost regained consciousness, he reported that he had felt no pain.
A better result could hardly
Although the operation had been
witnessed, and was reported in Boston newspapers the next day, it did not
attract widespread attention. Clearly, a more dramatic demonstration was
needed. Morton therefore asked Dr. John C. Warren, senior surgeon at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, for an opportunity to give a practical
demonstration before a group of doctors of his method of preventing pain. Dr.
Warren agreed, and a demonstration was scheduled at the hospital. There, on October 16, 1846, before a considerable audience
of doctors and medical students, Morton administered ether to a surgical
patient, Gilbert Abbott; Dr. Warren then removed a tumor from Abbott's neck.
The anesthetic proved completely effective, and the demonstration was an
overwhelming success. That demonstration, which was promptly reported in many
newspapers, was directly responsible for the widespread use of anesthetics in surgical operations over the course
of the next few years.
Several days after the operation on
Abbott, an application for a patent was
filed by Morton and Jackson. Although a patent was granted to them the
following month, it did not prevent a series of priority fights from arising.
Morton's claim that he was entitled to most of the credit for the introduction
of anesthesia was contested by a few other persons, particularly by Jackson.
Furthermore, Morton's expectation that his innovation would make him rich was not fulfilled. Most doctors and
hospitals who made use of ether did not bother to pay any royalties. The
costs of litigation and of his struggle for priority soon exceeded the money
that Morton received for his invention. Frustrated and impoverished, he died in
1868, in New York City. He was not quite forty-nine years old.
The usefulness of anesthesia in
dentistry and in major surgery is obvious. In estimating Morton's overall
importance, therefore, the main difficulty is in deciding to what extent credit
for the introduction of anesthesia should be divided between
It is true enough that Horace Wells had started
using anesthesia in his dental practice almost two years before Morton's successful use of ether. But the anesthetic
that Wells used, nitrous oxide, did
not and could not have revolutionized surgery. Despite some desirable
qualities, nitrous oxide is simply not a powerful
enough anesthetic to be used alone in major surgery. (It is useful today
when employed in a sophisticated combination with other drugs, and also in some
dental work.) Ether, on the other hand, is
an amazingly effective and versatile chemical, and its use
revolutionized surgery. In most individual cases today, a more desirable drug,
or combination of drugs, than ether can be found; but for roughly a century after its
introduction, ether was the
anesthetic most usually employed.
Morton anesthetizes a patient.
Despite its disadvantages (it is inflammable, and nausea is a common after effect
of its use), it is still perhaps the most versatile single anesthetic ever
discovered. It is easy to transport and to administer; and, most important of
all, combines safety and potency.
Crawford W. Long (born 1815, died
1878) was a Georgian doctor who had used
ether in surgical operations as early as 1842, which was four years
before Morton's demonstration. However, Long
did not publish his results until 1849, which was long after Morton's
demonstration had made the usefulness of ether in surgery well known to the
medical world. As a result, Long's work benefited only a handful of patients,
whereas Morton's work benefited the world at large.
Charles Jackson
suggested the use of ether to Morton, and he
also gave Morton helpful advice on how to administer ether to patients. On the
other hand, Jackson himself never made any significant use of ether in a
surgical operation; nor, prior to Morton's
successful demonstration, did Jackson make any attempt to inform the
medical world of what he did know about ether. It was Morton, not Jackson, who risked his reputation by making a
public demonstration. If Gilbert Abbott had died on the operating table, it
seems exceedingly unlikely that Charles T. Jackson would have claimed any
responsibility for the demonstration.
Where does William Morton belong on
this list? An apt comparison could be made between Morton and Joseph Lister.
Both were medical men; both are famous for introducing a new technique or
procedure that revolutionized surgery and childbearing; both of the innovations
seem, in hindsight, to have been fairly obvious; neither man was actually the
first to employ the technique or procedure which was publicized and popularized through his efforts; and each must share the
credit for his innovation with others. I have ranked Morton higher than
Lister principally because I believe that in
the long run the introduction
The public
demonstration of a practical means of anesthesia that Morton gave on that
October morning in 1846 is one of the great dividing points in human history.
Perhaps nothing sums up Morton's achievement better than the inscription on his
monument:
William T. G. Morton
Inventor
and revealer of anesthetic inhalation,
By
whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled; Before whom surgery was at all times agony, Since whom
science has control of pain.
With
this glass container, Morton first administered sulphuric ether to a patient in
1846.
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