Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

We will now quote directly from Doctor Warren's lecture on “The Influence of Anaesthesia on the Surgery of the Nineteenth Century,” delivered before the American Surgical Association in 1897:

Morton having acquainted himself by conversation with Mr. Metcalf and Mr. Burnett, both leading druggists, as to purity and qualities of ether, and having also conversed with Mr. Wightman, a philosophical instrument-maker, and with Doctor Jackson as to inhaling apparatus, proceeded to experiment upon himself. After inhaling the purer quality of ether from a handkerchief he awoke to find that he had been insensible for seven or eight minutes.

The same day a stout, healthy man came to his office suffering from great pain and desiring to have a tooth extracted. Dreading the pain, he accepted willingly Morton's proposal to use ether, and the tooth was extracted without suffering. Morton reported his success the next day to Jackson, and conversed with him as to the best methods of bringing his discovery to the attention of the medical profession and the public. Jackson pointed out that tooth-pulling was not a sufficient test, as many people claimed to have teeth pulled without pain. It was finally decided that the crucial test lay in a public demonstration in the operating theatre of a hospital in a surgical case.

There is one statement in the above to which, according to our rules of literary procedure, we feel obliged to take exception,--that is, the statement concerning the interview between Morton and Jackson after the successful administration of ether to Morton's patient. It