William Thomas Green Morton

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Thomas Morton

William Thomas Green Morton (born August 9, 1819 in Charlton , Massachusetts , † July 15, 1868 in New York City , New York ) was an American dentist and responsible for the first public demonstration of ether as an inhalation anesthetic on October 16, 1846 in Boston . Since then he has been considered a pioneer of anesthesia and the founder of modern anesthesia .

Life

Thomas Green Morton was the son of the farmer James Morton and his wife Rebecca Morton, b. Needham from Charlton , Massachusetts. After graduating from high school, Morton worked as a clerk, printer and merchant in Boston , Massachusetts. In 1840 he entered the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery , but left without a degree. Because he moved to Hartford , Connecticut in 1842 , where he continued to study under Horace Wells . Both later became partners. Morton then switched from dentistry to oral surgery and studied at Baltimore College . In 1842 he opened a practice as a dentist. He worked with Horace Wells in 1842 and 1843. In order to further deepen his knowledge in the medical field, he took up studies again in 1844, this time at the Harvard Medicinal School. But even here he did not graduate. However, during this time he attended lectures by Professor Charles Thomas Jackson , who, among other things, spoke about the fact that inhaling ethereal solutions leads to temporary loss of consciousness.

First use of ether in a tooth extraction

Wells was using nitrous oxide in his dental practice to treat his patients around this time . After numerous experiments with his pain patients, Wells wanted to demonstrate his anesthetic nitrous oxide publicly in Boston, but this was a failure. Morton, on the other hand, opted for dentures . When the stumps and roots of the broken teeth had to be removed, patients demanded painless treatment. The professor Charles Thomas Jackson , with whom Morton had also talked , drew his attention to the intoxicating effects of sulfur ether, which Michael Faraday had already described in a paper in 1818. After experiments with ether fumes on mice, fish, insects, chickens and his own dog, Morton also carried out self- experiments with sulfur ether in 1846 .

Replica of William TG Morton's inhaler from 1846, the first public demonstration of an operation performed under ether anesthesia.

On September 30, 1846, the cellist Eben Frost came to Morton's practice with a toothache so bad that he immediately agreed to the ether being tested during the extraction of his ulcerated molar tooth. When the patient awoke from his anesthetic, he explained to Morton that he had felt no pain when pulling the teeth. He confirmed the success of the procedure to Morton and his assistant, Doctor Hayden. The following day the Boston Daily Journal reported :

"Yesterday evening a gentleman had a tooth extracted without any pain sensation after inhaling a preparation whose sleepy, numbing effect lasted for about a minute."

Morton turned to the chief surgeon, Professor John Collins Warren (1778-1856), at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with a request to conduct a demonstration of his method in front of doctors and medical students. He received a written invitation for Friday, October 16, 1846, at ten o'clock in the morning (Fig.). Morton made the patient, the twenty-year-old consumptive printer Edward Gilbert Abbott, inhale the vapors from a specially made glass ball containing a sponge soaked in ether. After initial restlessness , the patient fell asleep. Then Professor Warren removed a "congenital, superficial and vascularized tumor below the lower jaw on the left side of the neck" of the patient within five minutes. Warren, who actually rejected such methods after Horace Wells' unsuccessful demonstration of laughing gas two years earlier, was enthusiastic about the new method ("Gentlemen, this is no humbug"). This event in the ethereal dome is considered to be the hour of birth of modern anesthesia .

The Bulfinch Building in Boston including the Ether Dome , photo from 1941

On the following day, the surgeon and urologist George Hayward (1798–1863) operated on the adipose tissue of a patient under ether anesthesia. The procedure developed by Morton was generally recognized after the thigh amputation in Great Britain in December 1846 by Henry Jacob Bigelow after he had operated painlessly on a 20-year-old patient on November 7, 1846. In Germany, ether anesthesia was first used in Erlangen in 1847, and shortly afterwards in Tübingen and Munich.

Morton first tried to disguise which active ingredient he had used in the anesthesia. He called the scented sulfur ether “ Letheon ” (derived from the Greek word lethe , forgetting) in order to benefit from patenting. A few weeks later, during the operation on November 7, 1846, he was forced by the auditorium to reveal his secret. A legal dispute arose over the question of who should have priority in this invention, which was mainly pursued by the idea generator, Professor Jackson. The costs of this dispute ruined Morton, especially since the royalties he had hoped for on the patent for his invention were hardly ever received. Morton had also developed a Letheon inhaler for the use of ether anesthesia, so that the use of the ether can also be properly dosed. He had this medical device patented in good time. In 1852 William Morton was awarded an honorary doctorate for his medical achievements by the University of Washington in Baltimore.

After more than 20 years of litigation, William Thomas Green Morton died impoverished and miserable on July 15, 1868 from the consequences of a stroke .

However, Morton was not the first to use the numbing effect of ether to eliminate pain during surgical interventions. As early as March 30, 1842, Doctor Crawford Williamson Long had removed a tumor from a patient's neck painlessly, using a towel soaked with ether. However, he failed to publish it and thus deprived himself of his legitimate priority claims.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Bergman NA. Michael Faraday and his contribution to anesthesia. In: Anesthesiology. Volume 77, No. 4, 1992, pp. 812-816 (English).
  2. ↑ quoted from Illustrated History of Medicine (1992), Vol. 6, p. 3281, u. Karger-Decker (1984), p. 149
  3. ↑ quoted from Karger-Decker (1984), p. 149
  4. ↑ quoted from Karger-Decker (1984), p. 149
  5. ^ Richard J. Kitz, Leroy D. Vandam: A History and the Scope of Anesthetic Practice. In: Ronald D. Miller (Ed.): Anesthesia. 3 volumes, Churchill Livingstone, New York / Edinburgh / London / Melbourne 1981, 2nd edition ibid. 1986, ISBN 0-443-08328-2 , Volume 1, pp. 3–25, here: pp. 6 f.
  6. ↑ quoted from Chronik der Medizin (1997), p. 276
  7. ^ L. Lewis Wall (2005): Dr. George Hayward (1791-1863): a forgotten pioneer of reconstructive pelvic surgery. In: International Urogynecology Journal , 16: 330-333, doi : 10.1007 / s00192-005-1333-2 .
  8. ↑ Chronik der Medizin (1997), p. 276
  9. ↑ HJ Bigelow wrote at the time: "The preparation (letheon) is inhaled from a small two-necked glass globe, and smells of ether, and is, we have little doubt, an etherial solution of some narcotic substance". Quoted from: Albert Faulconer, Thomas Edward Keys: Crawford Williamson Long. In: Foundations of Anesthesiology. 2 volumes, Charles C Thomas, Springfield (Illinois) 1965, Volume 1, pp. 310-316, here: pp. 310 f.
  10. ↑ Biography of William Thomas Morton, Science Museum Broughttolife Great Britain; in: http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/williammorton
personal data
SURNAME Morton, William Thomas Green
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Doctor; Anesthesia pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlton , Massachusetts , United States
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1868
Place of death New York City , New York , United States