The_Invention_of_Surgery

and organ systems. This makes anesthesia possible, which makes surgery
real.
On the west side of the Boston Public Garden (the setting of the beloved
children’s book Make Way for Ducklings), in view of the lagoon’s swan
boats and Commonwealth Avenue stands the Ether Monument, a forty-foot
granite sculpture memorializing the first public demonstration of ether
anesthesia in 1846. On one side of the monument is the inscription: “To
commemorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility
to pain. First proved to the world at the Mass General Hospital in Boston,
October AD MDCCCXLVI.” The wording is brilliant. Setting aside the
controversy of Long, Morton, Jackson, and Wells, the clear and concise
verbiage emphasizes the most important point—that in Boston, on October
16, 1846, men proved to the world that ether causes insensibility to pain,
true anesthesia. Thousands of years of tinkering with flowers, herbs, and
alcohol had resulted in genuine impotence in the face of pain. And while it
is now obvious that Crawford Long was the true pioneer in ether
anesthesia, it was on that day in Boston that man realized that he had
finally conquered pain and established dominion over consciousness. In all
of human history, it is one of our most miraculous moments, and for
anyone who has languished in agony and submitted herself to the knife of
a surgeon, that moment in the MGH ether dome is transcendent, glorious,
and the stuff of the dreams of the gods.