The first surgery under ether: Crawford Long, March 30, 1842

The first recorded surgery under ether anesthesia was performed on March 30, 1842, by physician Crawford W. Long in his office in Jefferson, Georgia. With his patient James Venable breathing sulfuric ether, Long removed a growth from Venable’s neck before three witnesses, and Venable reported feeling no pain.

Long got the idea from student “ether frolics”, parties where people inhaled ether or laughing gas for fun and often fell or bumped into things without seeming to feel any pain. He used ether in further operations, but did not rush into print. He wanted to be sure, and in Jefferson some neighbours already suspected witchcraft; others thought pain was God’s way of cleansing the soul.

That caution cost him, and Boston got the credit. In October 1846, Boston dentist William T. G. Morton demonstrated ether in public at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the medical journals followed. Long read the December 1846 and January 1847 accounts and only then began writing up his own work, collecting notarized letters from former patients. By the time he presented his findings in 1849, Morton, Charles Jackson and Horace Wells were already fighting over who had discovered anesthesia. Long’s article and affidavits appeared in the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal in December 1849.

The dispute reached Congress, which considered granting the Boston dentist $100,000 for the discovery. Rival claims, Long’s among them, stalled the reward, and the bill was eventually dropped. Long never won full recognition in his lifetime; he died in 1878.

The verdict has since shifted. Historians now credit him as the first doctor to give ether as a general anesthetic for an operation. Georgia gave his marble statue to the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection in 1926, and March 30, the anniversary of the Venable operation, is now observed as National Doctors’ Day.