World Anesthesia Day commemorates the first successful demonstration of ether anesthesia on October 16, 1846. William Thomas Green Morton (August 9, 1819 – July 15, 1868) was an American dentist who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic in 1846. Born in Charlton, Massachusetts, William T. G. Morton was the son of James Morton, a farmer, and Rebecca (Needham) Morton. William found work as a clerk, printer, and salesman in Boston before entering Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1840. In 1841, he gained notoriety for developing a new process to solder false teeth onto gold plates. In 1842, he left college without graduating to study in Hartford, Connecticut with dentist Horace Wells, with whom Morton shared a brief partnership. In the autumn of 1844, Morton entered Harvard Medical School and attended the chemistry lectures of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who introduced Morton to the anesthetic properties of ether. Morton then also left Harvard without graduating. On September 30, 1846, Morton performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient.
Anesthesia, or anaesthesia (from Greek ἀν-, an-, "without"; and αἴσθησις, aisthēsis, "sensation") is a temporary state consisting of unconsciousness, loss of memory, lack of pain, and muscle relaxation. The purpose of anesthesia can be distilled down to three basic goals or end points: hypnosis (a temporary loss of consciousness and with it a loss of memory), analgesia (lack of sensation which also blunts autonomic reflexes) & muscle relaxation Read more...
