Ether was first used as a surgical anesthetic

On March 30, 1842, in his office in Jefferson, Georgia, physician Crawford W. Long performed what is widely regarded as the first surgery using inhaled anesthesia. Having his patient breathe sulfuric ether from a soaked towel, he painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of James Venable before several witnesses.

Long had noticed that people intoxicated by ether at social “frolics” seemed not to feel their bruises. He turned that observation into careful practice, repeating ether surgeries to prove the absence of pain was real anesthesia rather than imagination.

Yet he did not publish his results until 1849, by which time William T. G. Morton’s celebrated 1846 ether demonstration in Boston had captured the credit. Long’s delay cost him the headlines, though Georgia and medical historians have since restored his claim as a true pioneer of surgical anesthesia.