In the end, Crawford Long did earn the accolades he deserved. One of
the Emory University hospitals in Atlanta is named after him, and his
statue is in the United States capitol building. But he never got to revel in
the notoriety that would one day be bestowed upon him.
The story is much worse for Wells, Jackson, and Morton.
Horace Wells rapidly declined in the months after Morton’s successful
demonstration. He moved often, failed in his dental practices, and
eventually became addicted to ether and chloroform. He committed
suicide (just fifteen months after Morton’s demonstration) in a prison cell
in New York City while under the influence of chloroform.
Charles Jackson continued his lifelong quest for fame and recognition,
but instead died impoverished and insane.
William Morton, even hungrier for financial reward and esteem, was
crippled by regret and resentment. He lost patent battles and the respect of
his colleagues, and was censured by the American Medical Association on
the grounds of “unworthy conduct.”
At the age of forty-eight, after losing yet another legal battle over
recognition of his “invention” of ether anesthesia, Morton killed himself
during a summer heat wave in New York City. “On an impulse, he decided
to take his wife Elizabeth on a cooling buggy-ride through Central Park.
Without warning, he suddenly jerked the horse to a stop, leaped out of the
wagon, and plunged his head into the tepid water of the lake. Obviously
disturbed, he was urged back into the buggy, but had driven only a short
while longer when he precipitously vaulted from the rig, threw his body
over a nearby fence, and fell to the ground on the other side, unconscious,”
dying from a cerebral hemorrhage.^22
Europe had been at the forefront of medical innovation for centuries,
but for the first time, American physicians and scientists had made a
major contribution. Within weeks, news reached London that anesthesia
had finally been accomplished. For those in London, less than seventy-five
years since the Boston Tea Party, a revolution so close to the Boston harbor
must have seemed highly unlikely.
Robert Liston, the celebrated professor of surgery at University
College, London, scrambled to test the efficacy of ether on one of his
patients. On December 21, 1846, Liston performed an above-knee
amputation, the first surgical operation in Europe under ether anesthesia.
The operation was a success, and instead of butchery, the witnesses were