For all practical purposes we may limit further consideration of the history of anæsthesia to these three substances, and mainly to the consideration of the introduction and adoption of ether, which displaced nitrous oxide, preceded chloroform, and has held its own to the present day as the anaesthetic in most general use, although in{304} many respects inferior to chloroform. But the glamour of history pertains mostly to ether, because of the peculiar difficulties and incidents attending its production. For the honor of its discovery there are four claimants:--Crawford W. Long, of Danielsville, Ga.; Charles T. Jackson, of Plymouth, Mass.,--both physicians; Horace Wells, of Hartford, Vt., and William T. G. Morton, of Charleston, Mass.,--both dentists. It is only fair to each of these four men to consider briefly the merits of the claims made for each, while at the same time attributing the final success of the new agent to the happy accidents which permitted Morton to make a public demonstration of its power in the Massachusetts General Hospital, before such eminent men as Warren, Bigelow, and others, by whose influence and reputation the agent was at once received upon its merits. This was on the sixteenth of October, 1846,--a year which deserves to be memorable in the history of medicine. Crawford Long graduated, in 1839, from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and settled in Jefferson, Georgia, where it seems to have been a common thing to have what was known as "ether frolics," during which the exhilarating effects of the inhalation of the drug were matters of common sport and amusement at various small gatherings. Long himself frequently inhaled the drug and often felt its benumbing effects. It is stated that it finally occurred to him to give it a trial in a surgical operation, and that, in May of 1842, he removed a small tumor from the neck of a patient thus anaesthetized and without any pain. Owing to the sparseness of the population and the lack of dissemination of medical knowledge in those days, no public report was made of these operations, which produced nothing more than local town-talk. A young student of Long's, named Wilhite, kept a negro boy under the influence of ether for some time, to Long's surprise. Long lived one hundred and thirty{305} miles from any railroad, and the first published account of his operations appeared in 1849, which was suggested by an account of Morton's work, which he had read in the editorials of the _Medical Examiner_ for December, 1846. Long died in 1878, the unfortunate controversy in which the four claimants already mentioned participated being not yet concluded. Nevertheless, there is every reason to think that he is entitled to the credit of having first anaesthetized a patient with sulphuric ether for the purpose of producing insensibility to pain.