Main Event

Anesthesia: The First Drop

Main Event


 The first time anesthesia was used, was at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The dentist William T.G. Morton and his surgeon John Warren used sulfuric ether as a form of anesthesia, to remove a vascular tumor from a patient's neck on October 16, 1846. This surgery was a public demonstration to teach other physicians and doctors. The surgery was performed on a man named Glenn Abbott. After the smooth-sailing surgery, the doctors noted that near the end of the procedure, the patient had flinched a little bit while he was under anesthesia. The flinching helped them to know that the patient was still alive but it also meant that they could have used a stronger dose of anesthesia. Other than that, the surgery had no other problems and changed humans' lives forever. Drs. Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood independently invented the hollow hypodermic needle, the syringe popularized in 1845 by Ireland's Francis Rynd, an Irish physician.



William T.G. Morton was the first doctor to successfully conduct surgery while the patient was put to sleep under an anesthetic. Morton changed our lives forever by proving that surgeries can be painless for patients.







Willian T.G. Morton, General Surgery News, May 24, 2021




"The state should, I think, be called 'anesthesia. ' This signifies insensibility"-William T.G. Morton