William T. G. Morton
William Thomas Green Morton ( born August 9, 1819 in Charlton, Massachusetts, † July 15, 1868 in New York) was an American dentist and pioneer of the use of anesthesia in surgery and dentistry. He was responsible for the first public demonstration of ether as an inhalation anesthetic.
Life
William Thomas Green Morton was the farmer's son James and Rebecca Morton, nee Needham from Charlton Massachusetts. William T. G. Morton was originally dentist. But before that, he worked as a clerk, printer, and merchant in Boston. In 1840, he first entered the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1842 and moved to the Hartford, Connecticut where he continued to study under Horace Wells. The two became partners later. Morton was then studied dentistry and maxillofacial surgery at the Baltimore College. In 1842 he opened a practice as a dentist. He worked in 1842 and 1843 with Horace Wells together. Wells began about a year later in his dental practice nitrous oxide in the treatment of his patients. After numerous experiments with his pain patients Wells also wanted to demonstrate his anesthetic nitrous oxide publicly in Boston, but that was a failure.
Morton, however, had opted for dental prosthetics. If the stumps and roots of defective teeth had to be removed, the patient required a pain-free treatment. Professor Charles Thomas Jackson, in which Morton had famuliert, drew his attention to the intoxicating effects of sulfuric ether, which had been described in 1818 Michael Faraday in a treatise. After experimenting with ether vapors in mice, fish, insects, chickens and his own dog Morton also conducted experiments on himself.
On September 30, 1846 Cellist Eben Frost came with such strong toothache in Morton's practice that he agreed with the extraction of his abscessed molar tooth with a trial of the ether. When the patient awoke from his stupor, he confirmed Morton that he had felt no pain during tooth extraction. He confirmed Morton and his assistant, Dr. Hayden, the success of the procedure. The following day the " Boston Daily Journal " reported:
Morton turned to the senior surgeon, Professor John Collins Warren (1778-1856), at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with a request to perform a demonstration of his method of doctors and medical students. He received a written invitation for Friday, October 16, 1846, at ten clock in the morning (Fig.). Morton was the patient, the twenty-year consumptive printer Gilbert Abbott, inhaling the vapors from a specially prepared glass globe containing a sponge soaked with ether. After some initial anxiety, the patient fell asleep. Then remote Professor Warren has an 'innate, lying superficial and highly vascular tumor below the lower jaw on the left side of the neck "of the patient within five minutes. Warren, who two years previously rejected such methods actually after the unsuccessful demonstration of nitrous oxide by Horace Wells, was enthusiastic about the new possibilities ( "Gentlemen, this is no humbug "). This event in the ether dome is considered the birth of modern anesthesia.
Already the next day the surgeon and urologist operated George Hayward (1798-1863), the fatty lesions of a patient under anesthesia. The general recognition developed by Morton method is based on the successful amputation by Henry Jacob Bigelow at a twenty year old female patient on 7 November 1846.
Morton initially tried to cover up what drug he had used. He described the fragranced substances ether as " Letheon " (derived from the Greek word lethe, forgetfulness ) to benefit from patenting. A few weeks later, during the operation on November 7, 1846, he was forced from the Auditorium to unveil his secret. About the question of who fees the priority in this invention, it came to a lawsuit, which was operated mainly by the creative director, Professor Jackson. The cost of this conflict ruined Morton, especially hoped royalties hardly arrived on the patent his invention. According to more than twenty years hinziehendem processing of Morton died penniless and careworn in July 1868 following a stroke.
However, Morton was not the first who made the numbing effect of the ether for anesthesia during surgical procedures available. Already on 30 March 1842 Dr. Crawford Williamson Long had a patient removed a tumor of the neck pain, where he used a cloth soaked with ether towel. But he failed a publication and brought himself so to his legitimate priority claims.