Returning to Boston in 1844, the young surgeon rapidly attained a prominent position. In January, 1846, before he had completed his twenty-eighth year, he was appointed visiting surgeon of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Here on November 7, 1846, there occurred one of the greatest historic events--the first surgical operation in which insensibility to pain was secured by the inhalation of ether. Dr. Bigelow's enthusiasm for the new discovery was very great, and it has been said that to him "the world was indebted for the introduction of anaesthesia in surgery at the exact time in which it occurred." Dr. Bigelow was surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1846 to 1886--a period of forty years. He was professor of surgery in Harvard University from 1849 to 1882, or a third of a century. When he resigned the latter position, President Eliot in his annual report referred to him as "a discoverer and inventor of world-wide reputation, a brilliant surgical operator, a natural leader of men." The faculty of Harvard Medical School also spoke of him as one "who had done so much to render this school conspicuous and to make American surgery illustrious throughout the world." This is high praise. Let it be remembered in reading his opinions concerning vivisection. An abhorrence of pain was a marked trait in Dr. Bigelow's character. Even to the infliction of necessary suffering he had an extreme dislike. His gentleness to animals was akin to his tenderness for children. He had a great respect for their intelligence, their affection, their confidence in mankind. Toward the close of life he had among his pets a number of the little animals most closely related to human beings, and therefore the most-prized "material" of the vivisector. But such was Dr. Bigelow's sympathy with his little friends that he disliked to take visitors into their presence, and when he did, always cautioned them to assume a smiling face. He was unwilling to give his pets even the mental suffering of anxiety or fear. He died October 30, 1890, at the ripe age of seventy-two. It was Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself illustrious in science and in literature, who referred to the name of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow as "one of the brightest in the annals of American surgery, not to claim for it A STILL HIGHER PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THE HEALING ART."