First British and Irish Press Reports of Surgical Etherization.

In mid-December 1846, British and Irish newspapers reported the news of surgical etherization far more extensively than previously described. Reports about etherization had appeared at least 20 British and Irish newspapers in the days before Robert Liston's first operations under etherization on December 21, 1846. These reports were based on four separate accounts, 2 of which could be traced to New York, and 1 account had been published in a Parisian newspaper Galignani's Messenger on December 9, 1846.

'On the inhalation of the vapour of Æther, with cases': The first paper on anaesthesia read before a medical society in Australia.

On 7 September 1847, in Melbourne in the Port Phillip District of the Colony of New South Wales, David John Thomas (1813-1871) presented a paper, 'On the inhalation of the vapour of Æther, with cases', at an ordinary monthly meeting of the Port Phillip Medical Association. This is the earliest known presentation of a paper on etherisation in Australia. The partial publication of the manuscript in October 1847 in the Australian Medical Journal may have led to it being returned to Thomas in Melbourne. The handwritten manuscript is now preserved in the Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria. A transcript of the complete manuscript is now recorded with relevant historical notes.

The First Etherization in England: New Research Regarding the Identity of the First Patient, Miss Lonsdale.

On December 19, 1846, at the London home of Francis Boott, dentist James Robinson administered the vapor of diethyl ether to a young female patient named Miss Lonsdale. This was the earliest known attempt in England to provide painless operating conditions for a dental extraction, and it was successful. Many authors have since written much about Boott and Robinson, but scarcely anything is known about Miss Lonsdale. In contemporaneous accounts of the event, Robinson referred to his patient as a "young person" and a "young lady"; Boott, however, named her, suggesting that she was publicly recognizable. Our initial attempt to identify Miss Lonsdale was based on genealogical, United Kingdom Census, and other public records, using selection criteria based on age, name recognition, familial relationships, and London addresses. This produced 7 possible candidates from publicly recognizable families, though none was notable in her own right. Our second attempt was based primarily on contemporaneous newspaper records, among which were published 2 private letters in which Boott referred to Robinson's patient as a "girl." We found that "Miss Lonsdale" was the publicly recognizable name of 2 young stage-performing sisters, Adeline Lonsdale, a danseuse, and Annie Lonsdale, an actor-comedienne. Both subsequently emigrated to the United States where they were well-known stage performers. Accordingly, we suggest that both are highly probable candidates for that etherized patient, with the younger sister Adeline then more publicly recognizable. However, no records were found that directly associated any of the Miss Lonsdale candidates with that first dental anesthetic in England.

Inspiration from inhalation: Poetry about anaesthesia in Australian newspapers in 1847-1848.

An anonymous poem and a cartoon about etherisation were published in Bell's Life in Sydney on 26 June 1847, less than 3 weeks after ether was first administered in Sydney, New South Wales. Almost a year later, an Adelaide newspaper, The South Australian Register, reproduced a poem about chloroform from the British satirical magazine Punch. This poem, 'The Blessings of Chloroform', has been attributed to Percival Leigh, a British medical practitioner who became a comic writer.

William T. G. Morton's English Patent for Etherization: Patently Pointless?

Boston dentist William T. G. Morton secured a provisional English patent for etherization in December 1846. The full patent specification was submitted 6 months later, and the patent was sealed on June 18, 1847. The enrolled copies of the provisional and full patents, which are held in The National Archives, London, have not been previously documented in the anesthesia literature. We review the communications between Boston and London regarding the patent for etherization, the possibility that preliminary discussions and trials of etherization may have been conducted in London before the earliest known application of the discovery for a dental extraction on December 19, 1846, and the role of the American lawyer James Augustus Dorr, who was Morton's agent in the United Kingdom.

John Davies Thomas: Chloroformist in London and pioneer South Australian doctor.

John Davies Thomas (1844-1893) described a two-ounce drop-bottle for chloroform in 1872 while he was a resident medical officer at University College Hospital, London. After working as a ship's surgeon, he settled in Australia. In May 1875, Thomas presented a paper on the mortality from ether and chloroform at a meeting of the Medical Society of Victoria in Melbourne, Victoria. Surveys conducted in Europe and North America had established that the mortality from chloroform was eight to ten times higher than that from ether. At that time, chloroform was the most widely administered anaesthetic in Australia. Thomas' paper was published in The Australian Medical Journal and reprinted by the Medical Society of Victoria for distribution to hospitals in the Colony of Victoria. Later that year, Thomas moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where he may have been influential at the Adelaide Hospital in ensuring that ether was administered more often than chloroform. It does not appear that Thomas' papers on anaesthesia had a significant effect on the conduct of anaesthesia in Victoria or New South Wales.

Morton's Letheon: When was the name Letheon chosen?

Letheon was the commercial name that Boston dentist William T. G. Morton chose for his ether-based "preparation" that was inhaled to produce insensibility during surgical and dental procedures. The multiple editions of Edward Warren's Some Account of the Letheon (1847) as well as Nathan P. Rice's Trials of a Public Benefactor (1859) provide the only known accounts of the meeting hosted by the physician Augustus A. Gould at which the name Letheon was chosen. Neither Warren nor Rice mentions when the meeting occurred. In all likelihood, it was held at some point in a three-week period from mid-November to just short of December 9, 1846, the publication date of the earliest known reference to the name. The absence of the word Letheon in Morton's public notices around the end of November 1846 or, indeed, in any document until his December 9 advertisement in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal suggests a later date for the meeting than has been previously reported.

Paper trails: History of the first Australian paper on ether anaesthesia.

In September 1847, David John Thomas read a paper on etherisation at a monthly meeting of the Port Phillip Medical Association. Thomas' paper is the earliest known presentation of a paper on etherisation in the Australian colonies. Almost half of Thomas' 27-page manuscript was published in October 1847 in the Australian Medical Journal. The original manuscript was acquired at an unknown date by the Medical Society of Victoria. Although a full transcript of the manuscript was published in 1933, the original manuscript of Dr Thomas remained unknown to anaesthesia historians and is now held by the Medical History Museum, University of Melbourne.

David John Thomas and the first operation under etherisation in Melbourne.

The first patient etherised by David John Thomas was James Egan, an Irish bounty immigrant who lived on a pastoral lease about 120 km from Melbourne. Egan had injured his left hand and forearm in a shooting accident. It would take Egan five or six days to reach Melbourne where he had his forearm amputated on 2 August 1847. Egan had fainted frequently in the cart on the way to Melbourne and was fortunate to survive the etherisation and surgery. In September 1847, Thomas presented a paper on etherisation at a monthly meeting of the Port Phillip Medical Association-this is the earliest known presentation of a paper on etherisation in the Australian colonies. The original manuscript of Dr Thomas is now held by the Medical History Museum at the University of Melbourne.

Etymology of Letheon: Nineteenth-century Linguistic Effervescence.

In late 1846, following his successful public demonstrations of surgical anesthesia, Boston dentist William T. G. Morton selected Letheon as the commercial name for the ether-based "preparation" he had used to produce insensibility to pain. We have not identified a first-hand account of the coinage of Letheon. Although the name ultimately derives from the Greek Lethe, the adjective Lethean, much in use in the mid-19th century, may have influenced Morton and those he called on to assist in finding a commercial name. By one unverified account, the name Letheon might have been coined independently by both Augustus Addison Gould, M.D., and Henry Jacob Bigelow, M.D.

Anaesthetic or "Antiaesthetic" or "Antaesthetic"? Correspondence From Andrew Buchanan, MD, to James Simpson, MD, Concerning a Name for the Agents Producing Insensibility.

In November 1847, James Young Simpson, MD, of Edinburgh, Scotland, applied the word anaesthesia to the state of narcotism and insensibility produced by the inhaled vapors of sulfuric ether and chloroform, along with the word anaesthetic as an adjective to denote that state and as a generic term for agents capable of inducing the state of insensibility. In March 1848, Andrew Buchanan, MD, of Glasgow, Scotland, penned a letter to Simpson to suggest a more semantically precise word, the spelling of which is not clear in Buchanan's letter. We do not know whether Simpson replied to Buchanan. Simpson continued using the words anaesthesia and anaesthetic in his publications.

A Newly Discovered Manuscript of Charles T. Jackson, MD, on the Preparation and Administration of Anesthetics for Humans and Animals.

A newly discovered handwritten manuscript of Charles T. Jackson, MD, contains instructions for the preparation and administration of sulfuric ether, information on Jackson's preferred mixture of ether and chloroform, an account of his experiments with other potential anesthetic agents, and his comments on etherizing cattle and other animals. Jackson's nine-page manuscript is believed to have been written in the autumn of 1851, around the time that he submitted his memorial on the discovery of etherization to Baron von Humboldt, and made a separate submission to the US Congress.

Joseph Jacobs: Apprentice to Crawford W. Long in Athens, GA; Pharmacist and Retailer of Soda Fountain Beverages in Atlanta, GA.

In the 1870s, Joseph Jacobs was employed as an apprentice in the Longs and Billups pharmacy in Athens, GA. Jacobs later established a chain of pharmacies in Atlanta, GA. Coca-Cola was first sold to the public on May 8, 1886, at Jacobs' Pharmacy in the Five Points district of Atlanta, GA. The soda fountain in Jacobs' Pharmacy was owned by Willis E. Venable, who was related to James M. Venable, the first patient etherized by Crawford Long in Jefferson, GA.