William Thomas Morton and Anesthesia

     William was born in Charlton City, Massachusetts on August 8, 1819. His father said that from any early age he wanted to be a doctor, making pills for his friends from bread and leaves. His family didn't have the money to send him to medical school. He may have attended Baltimore College of Dentistry, for some time.  Later, when his family moved to Boston, he attended Harvard Medical School.

     In 1843, he became partners with Horace Wells in a dentistry business. Together they took on the problem of making a better spring-free denture plate. There was one problem with their dentures though.  Before the plate for the false teeth could be placed all roots and stumps of the original teeth had to be removed. This was a painful, bloody procedure. Horace soon left the partnership. Morton became quite sucessful in his business, but he was all too aware of the pain of his patients.

     All the components of anesthesia had already been invented.  Sulfuric ether had been discovered in 1540, nitrous oxide had been discovered in 1772, and in 1799 Sir Humphrey Davy had described the potential for the use of nitrous oxide in surgery.  In 1846, Morton had begun experiments with ether.  In his experiments he used worms, insects, goldfish, and a dog.  On October 16, 1846,  Morton arrived as Dr. Warren prepared to remove a tumor from Gilbert Abbott.  Over the previous weeks Morton had devised an apparatus to contain the ether.  Morton administered the ether to Gilbert and then told Warren, "Your patient is ready, sir."  After the surgery, Gilbert said, "No.  It didn't hurt at all, although my neck did feel for a moment as though someone were scraping it with a hoe." 

      Morton then attempted to patent his invention but the patent office would not allow him to patent unchanged ether. Crawford Long, a doctor who had used ether in 1842 but had made no public announcement of his work, also made attempts to claim ether as his invention.  Charles Jackson, Morton's tutor at Harvard, made attempts at claiming ether because Morton had learned most of what he knew about ether from him.  Horace Wells, his partner in the dentistry business, also tried to claim it as his own.

     Although Morton was not the first to use ether to dull pain, he was the first to publically present it to other doctors.