Word: etherealizing
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Sirs: Your recent reference to where credit lies for the "discovery" of ether in its relation to anesthesia prompts me to send you the photo-static copy of a letter in the research files of Paramount Studio where a great deal of work has been done in preparation for a picture on the subject. [Based on Fulop-Miller's Triumph Over Pain-ED.] It is from Daniel Webster, written Dec. 20, 1851, addressed to Dr. W. T. G. Morton and states: "In reply to your letter of the 17th instant, I would say that having been called upon...
Crawford Long's claim set the date of his discovery in the year 1842 there is no evidence that ether was used to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers during the first year of the war with Mexico as much as four years later...
Delighted with his success, Dr. Long tried ether on eight other patients. But gradually the word spread around that he was a sorcerer, and he was forced to give up anesthesia. Too modest to publish his early experiments until many years later, he laid his ether bottles aside...
...Wells had a partner, a cautious, experimental man, William Morton. He had no trust in laughing gas, but tried ether for years, independently of Long, on countless bugs, goldfish, rats, worms and dogs. Finally he successfully anesthetized himself and several patients. In 1846, he gave an ether demonstration before the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Said famed Surgeon John C. Warren to his amazed colleagues: "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." Doctors soon took up anesthesia with enthusiasm, but forgot Morton. For a while, he went into partnership with Charles Jackson, a noted chemist and physicist, but finally, homeless...
...Congress was ready to award him $100,000, but Chemist Jackson stormed Washington, violently denounced Morton as a fraud, claimed that he had given Morton the tip on the powers of ether. Up popped Dr. Long with a sheaf of documents to prove that he was first. Confronted by conflicting claims, Congress did nothing. Morton died a pauper in 1868. Jackson went mad, died in an asylum several years later. During the Civil War, Long buried his documents in the woods. Later he dug them up and stored them in the garret. He died an embittered...