This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[326]
The winter of 1850 and of 1851 passed without result, until finally in December of the latter year, Bissel, of Illinois, made a speech in Doctor Morton's favor, calling attention to the fact that the government had been pirating his patent, and proposing that the subject be referred to a committee.
Robert Rantoul seconded the motion, and the step was taken.
It was considered better for the chances of success that the proposition should come from a Western man.
This committee continued its meeting throughout the winter and made a thoroughgoing examination of the question before it. The frankness and plain character of Doctor Morton's testimony is much in his favor, and the description he gave of his own proceedings previous to the first operation in the Massachusetts Hospital show how hard he wrestled with his discovery,--wrestled like Jacob of old, --working half the night with an instrumentmaker to devise a suitable apparatus for inhalation.
Doctor Jackson and Horace Wells also presented their claims to the committee and were respectfully considered.
The report of this committee is a valuable document,--a study for young lawyers in the sifting of evidence,--and of itself a severe criticism on the judgment of the French Academy, which it considered at too great a distance to
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
Tufts University. provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.