Video: 'William T.G. Morton Biography'

(Friday, October 16, 1846, 10:00 a.m. local time) — Dentist William T. G. Morton demonstrated the effectiveness of ether as an anesthetic today by administering it to a patient undergoing jaw surgery before an audience of doctors at the operating theater of the Massachusetts General Hospital, or MGH.

Morton’s first successful public demonstration of ether as an inhalation anesthetic was a widely publicized milestone in medical history, leading many to regard him as the “inventor and revealer” of anesthesia. However, Georgia surgeon Crawford Williamson Long had used ether as an anesthetic on March 30, 1842.

Although Long demonstrated its use to physicians in Georgia on several occasions, he did not publish his findings until 1849, when they appeared in The Southern Medical and Surgical Journal.