Boston got the credit for ether anaesthesia, but Georgia got there first
On October 16, 1846, William Morton put a patient under with ether in a Boston hall now called the Ether Dome, and surgery changed forever. But a Georgia doctor, Crawford Long, had quietly used ether in an operation back in 1842, and Morton's decision to patent his version scandalised colleagues.
Diethyl ether is a colourless, sweet-smelling liquid that evaporates readily and burns with alarming ease. Its origins are hazy; candidates for the first maker include the 8th-century alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān and, in 1275, Ramon Llull. Valerius Cordus produced it in 1540 by distilling ethanol with sulfuric acid, then known as oil of vitriol, and named it sweet oil of vitriol. Around the same time Paracelsus noticed that it dulled pain in dogs. August Sigmund Frobenius gave it the name ether in 1729, and chemists believed it contained sulfur until about 1800.
Morton flavoured his preparation with aromatic oils to mask the smell and called it Letheon, after the mythical river of forgetting. Long, by contrast, had shown ether's use in surgery to officials in Georgia on March 30, 1842, and gave six public demonstrations before Boston's. British physicians knew of its effects by 1840 and often prescribed it with opium.
Some doctors preferred ether to chloroform because it has a wider gap between an effective dose and a dangerous one. It also stimulates rather than depresses the heart, raising blood pressure and pulse, and preserves a key blood-pressure reflex, so it could be used in patients in shock. It was sometimes blended with chloroform, or chloroform and alcohol, into mixtures known by their initials.
Its flammability proved fatal to its career once electrical cautery spread through operating theatres in the mid-20th century. Non-flammable fluorinated agents took over, starting with halothane; today's inhaled anaesthetics such as sevoflurane are halogenated ethers. Ether also caused nausea and vomiting afterwards. Its low cost kept it in use in developing countries, and it stayed on the WHO essential medicines list until 2005. It had odder uses too: mixed one part to three with ethanol it became Hoffman's Drops, and it was even dripped into the nose to cure hiccups.
Source: Diethyl ether
