Ether (Anesthetic)
The colorless liquid ether was first synthesized about 1540 by Valerius Cordus (1515-1544), who called his discovery "sweet oil of vitriol" and described its medicinal properties. Paracelsus (1493-1541), a contemporary of Valerius, noted that the "oil" induced sleep in chickens when added to their feed. Frobenius (Froben) named the liquid "ethereal spirits" or "ether" in 1730.
In the 1790s, doctors at the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, England used ether inhalation to treat patients with consumption ( tuberculosis). The Institution's director Humphry Davy then discovered the pain-alleviating and exhilarating effects of inhaling nitrous oxide. Davy's student Michael Faraday noted the same results from inhaling ether in 1818. "Ether frolics" soon became popular, especially among medical students in the United States.
It was probably one of these entertainments that inspired the first use of ether as an anesthesia in 1842. A Rochester, New York, chemistry student, William Clark, administered ether to a Miss Hobbie in January 1842 while the dentist Elijah Pope painlessly extracted her tooth. Georgia physician Crawford Long (1815-1878) also had the idea to use ether as an anesthetic. As a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, Long had participated in ether frolics and continued them after he established his practice in Georgia in 1839. In March 1842, Long used ether to anesthetize James Venable and then removed a tumor from his friend's neck. Long continued to use ether anesthesia in his practice, but since he did not publish his results, the technique remained unknown to the wider world.
It was a Boston, Massachusetts dentist, William T. G. Morton (1819-1868), who introduced ether anesthesia to the world. Morton had been a partner in Horace Wells (1815-1848), the dentist who used nitrous oxide as a dental anesthesia. Morton devised a dental plate that required the extraction of any remaining rotted teeth and searched for a painless method. The eccentric chemist and ex-physician Charles T. Jackson (1805-1880) suggested that Morton use ether. In September 1846 Morton painlessly removed a tooth from an ether-anesthetized patient, Eben Frost. Morton then persuaded the head of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. John Collins Warren (1842-1927; who had previously agreed to Wells's attempted demonstration of nitrous oxide), to operate on a patient whom Morton would anesthetize. At the conclusion of the October 1846 operation on Gilbert Abbott, Warren declared to the throng of onlookers, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug."
The knowledge of ether as an anesthetic spread rapidly. Within months, surgery using ether anesthesia was being performed in England. Unfortunately, rancorous controversy raged over who should be credited with the discovery. Morton attempted to keep the nature of the anesthetic secret, calling it Letheon, and tried to patent his inhaler. Jackson entered the fray, and then Wells, who claimed priority for his use of nitrous oxide. Mrs. Wells continued to press the claim after her husband's suicide in 1848. Long then reported on his earlier use of ether. Morton devoted the remainder of his life to fighting Jackson 's claims and died of a stroke, in poverty, in 1868. Jackson, who also contested Samuel Morse's (1791-1872) invention of the telegraph, slipped into insanity in 1873 and died in 1880.
News of Warren's successful operation reached London, England in December 1846. On December 19, the dentist James Robinson used ether to painlessly extract a molar from a Miss Lansale. On December 21, the famous London surgeon Dr. Robert Liston (1794-1847) amputated the leg of Frederick Churchill, a butler. As he prepared to anesthetize Churchill with ether inhalation, Liston announced to the crowd of observers, "We are going to try a Yankee dodge today, gentlemen, for making men insensible." When Churchill came to less than five minutes later, his leg gone, he asked when the operation was going to begin. A shaken Liston concluded, "This Yankee dodge, gentlemen, beats mesmerism hollow."
The medical establishment and the public quickly and gratefully accepted the use of ether inhalation for painless surgery. The Russian Nicolai Ivanovich Pirogoff (1810-1881) in 1847 devised a method of administering ether vapor via the rectum. Marc Dupuy investigated the same technique that year in Paris, France. In 1915 American surgeon George Crile (1864-1943) began combining local anesthetics with ether inhalation to block pain impulses more completely. Today, however, nitrous oxide rather than ether is the general anesthesia most often used.
This is the complete article, containing 710 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
