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Early use of anesthesia
It was in the Ether Dome of MGH on October 16, 1846 that one of the first
demonstrations of ether was presented to the medical profession to produce
insensibility to pain by William Thomas Green Morton, a Boston dentist. An
operation was performed on that date to remove a blood vessel tumor from the
neck of a Cambridge, MA printer, William Abbott. The MGH Chief of Surgery, John
Collins Warren performed the surgery and remarked "Gentlemen this is no humbug."
News of the remarkable "new" invention rapidly traveled around the world. The
actual first documented use of ether to render a patient unconscious prior to
surgery was performed on March 30, 1842, by Dr. Crawford Long of Danielsville,
Georgia. The term anesthesia was suggested for the insensible state by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, then a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. A modern
anesthesia department was established at the hospital in 1936 under the
leadership of Henry Knowles Beecher. The Ether Dome still exists and is open to
the public. It is one of the oldest operating theaters in existence. It contains
a remarkable painting of the event by Warren and Lucia Prosperi.
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