"Fifth, that the whole agency of Dr. Jackson in the matter appears to consist entirely in his having made certain suggestions to aid Dr. Morton to make the discovery." In 1873, Jackson's mind gave way, and after seven years of confinement in an asylum he died in 1880, at the age of 75, having been the recipient of many honors from foreign potentates and learned societies. William T. G. Morton was born in Charleston, Mass., in 1819. After a disastrous experience in business he was sent to Baltimore in 1840 and began the study of dentistry. In 1841 he entered the dental office of Horace Wells as student and assistant, becoming a partner in 1842. In 1843 partnership was dissolved, Wells removing to Hartford, as before stated. Morton, ambitious for a medical degree, entered his name as a student in the office of Charles T. Jackson, in 1844, and the same year matriculated in the Harvard Medical School, though he never graduated. Having learned through Wells of the latter's successful use of nitrous oxide gas, but not knowing how to make it, he sought the advice of Dr. Jackson, who informed him that its preparation entailed considerable difficulty, and inquired for what purpose he wanted it. On Morton's replying that he wished to use it to make patients insensible to pain, Jackson suggested the use of sulphuric ether, as Marcey had suggested it to Wells two years previously, saying that it would produce the same effect and did not require any apparatus. Jackson also told Morton of the ether frolics common at Cambridge among the students. That same evening, September 30, 1846, Morton administered ether to a patient and extracted a tooth for him without pain. The next day he visited the office of a patent lawyer, for the purpose of securing a patent upon the new discovery. This lawyer ascertained that Jackson had been intimately connected with its suggestion, and came to the conclusion that a patent could not safely issue to either one independently of the other. But Jackson being a member of the State Medical Society, against whose ethical code it is to patent discoveries that pertain to the welfare of patients, and fearing the censure of his colleagues, agreed at once to assign his right over to Morton, receiving in return a 10 per cent. commission upon all that the latter made out of it. Morton, as a dentist, having no more compunction then than dentists have now upon the securement of a patent,--in other words, being actuated by no fine ethical scruples,--secured the patent, and then called upon Dr. J. Mason Warren, one of the surgeons in the Massachusetts General Hospital. Warren promised his coöperation and appointed the 16th of October, 1846, for the first public trial. Upon this occasion the clinic room was filled with visitors and students, when Morton placed the young man under the influence of his "letheon," as he called it then; after which Warren removed a tumor from his neck. The trial was most successful.