Dentist; born in
Charlton, Mass., Aug. 9, 1819.
After studying dentistry in
Baltimore in 1840, he settled in
Boston (1842), where he successfully manufactured
artificial teeth.
While attending lectures at a medical college, he conceived the idea that sulphuric ether might be used to alleviate pain.
Assured of its safety by experiments on himself, he first administered it successfully in his dental practice Sept. 30, 1846, extracting a firmly rooted tooth without pain.
At the request of
Dr. John C. Warren, ether was administered to a man in the
Massachusetts General Hospital, from whose groin a vascular tumor was removed while the patient was unconscious.
Dr. Morton obtained a patent for his discovery in November, 1846, under the name of “Letheon,” offering, however, free rights to all charitable institutions; but the government appropriated his discovery to its use without compensation.
Other claimants arose, notably
Dr. Charles T. Jackson and
Horace Wells, and he suffered great persecution in private and before Congress.
His business was ruined, and at the end of eight years of ineffectual struggle to procure from Congress remuneration for his discovery he and his family were left in poverty.
Honorable medical men of
Boston, New
York, and
Philadelphia assigned to
Dr. Morton the credit of the great discovery — “the most important benefaction ever made by man to the human race” —and
said so by signing an appeal for a national testimonial to him. He died in New York City, July 15, 1868, and the same year a monument was erected in the
Public Gardens,
Boston, to perpetuate his discovery.
