Anesthesia

1846 marks William Morton's public Massachusetts General Hospital ether demonstration, the most widely credited moment, but Crawford Long had used ether surgically in 1842 without publishing, and Horace Wells had demonstrated nitrous oxide in 1845 to a skeptical audience.

Priority among Morton, Long and Wells was disputed in their own lifetimes and remains a genuinely debated question among historians of medicine, not a settled attribution. 1846 marks William Morton's public Massachusetts General Hospital ether demonstration, the most widely credited moment, but Crawford Long had used ether surgically in 1842 without publishing, and Horace Wells had demonstrated nitrous oxide in 1845 to a skeptical audience. Crawford Long's supporters, and the U.S. observance of Doctors' Day each March 30, the anniversary of Long's 1842 operation, hold that Long deserves priority as the first physician to use ether surgically, arguing that Morton's fame rests on being first to demonstrate ether publicly and to seek a patent on it as Letheon, not on being first to use it. Horace Wells's family and later historians of dentistry have separately argued for Wells's priority, noting his own successful private use of nitrous oxide before his failed 1845 public demonstration, and holding that Morton's demonstration succeeded only because Wells's attempt, and its failure, had already shown what needed correcting.