If those inventions and discoveries out of which have come widespread safety, happiness, or prosperity to mankind are to be considered great, then Dr. Morton's discovery of anæsthetics and its application to surgery is entitled to a high place among the world's discoveries and inventions. The pain that has been destroyed, the lives that have been saved, the sorrow that has been averted, give their testimony to the value of this discovery to humanity.
An anæsthetic is administered to produce temporary insensibility to pain. At least something of anæsthetics was known to the ancients. Homer mentions nepenthe, a potion which was said to make persons forget their pains and sorrows. The word appears occasionally in literature. In "Evangeline" Longfellow refers to it in this line:
"Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet with the dews of nepenthe."
Virgil and other classical writers mention a mythical river Lethe which was supposed to surround Hades. Souls passing over to the happy fields of Elysium first drank from this river, whose waters caused them to forget their sorrows. Milton speaks of the mythical stream in the following passage from "Paradise Lost:"
"Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls her watery labyrinth."
Herodotus wrote that it was the practice of the Scythians to inhale the vapors of a certain kind of hemp to produce intoxication. The use of the mandrake plant as an anæsthetic is spoken of as far back as Pliny, the Roman historian. The sleep-producing effects of the mandragora or mandrake are alluded to by Shakespeare. He also frequently mentions in a general way draughts that act as anæsthetics, without making clear their specific natures. An old Chinese manuscript indicates that a physician of that country named Hoa-tho in the third century after Christ used a preparation of hemp as an anæsthetic in surgical operations. Although the ancients had knowledge of anæsthetics of one kind or other, the practice of anæsthesia never became general, and surgeons of the ancient world appear to have looked upon it with disfavor.
When in modern times Joseph Priestley, the English scientist (born in 1733, died 1804) gave great impetus to chemical research by his discoveries in that science, the nature of gases and vapors was more and more closely studied. The belief soon sprang up that many gases and vapors would ultimately become of great value in medicine and surgery. In 1800 Sir Humphry Davy experimented with nitrous oxide gas, called "laughing gas," and discovered its anæsthetic qualities. He suggested its use in surgery, but for practically half a century his suggestion passed unheeded. Other scientists experimented with greater or less success, seeking to find something that would alleviate physical pain; but to Dr. William T. G. Morton, an American, belongs the credit for the practical introduction of anæsthetics into modern surgery.