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.

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.

Wood's and Guedel's Legacies Return to the Heartland.

Pioneering anesthesiologists Paul Wood, M.D., and Arthur Guedel, M.D., were Hoosiers who migrated from America's Heartland to opposite coasts. Dr. Wood moved east to New York in 1913; Dr. Guedel, west to California in 1928. By 1962, each pioneer had been honored with a namesake anesthesia museum. Fast-forwarding 55 yr, two young anesthesia historians, California's Jane Moon, M.D., and Pennsylvania's Melissa Coleman, M.D., met at the 2017 International Symposium of the History of Anesthesia in Boston. Today, these women are chairs of the Wood Library-Museum's Archives and Museum Committees, respectively. As the newest authors of "Anesthesiology Reflections," Drs. Coleman and Moon leave their coastal states semiannually for board meetings at the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, returning as legacies of Drs. Wood and Guedel…back to the American Heartland.

How chloroform anesthesia reached Lowell, Massachusetts: From Simpson's pamphlet to Gladwin's advertisement.

J.Y. Simpson of Edinburgh, Scotland discovered chloroform anesthesia in November 1847. During this time, W.T.G. Morton's agents had been collecting royalties for the use of ether across much of the United States. After reading about the advantages of chloroform as cited in C.T. Jackson's writings in the Boston Daily Atlas, S.F. Gladwin, a dentist in Lowell, Massachusetts, who had been reluctant to pay any ether royalties, demonstrated his independence and opportunism in swiftly adopting chloroform in his practice and publicizing its use through local advertisements.

The rise and demise of pain exterminator Thomas S. McNeil: Every rose has its thorns.

United Brethren minister Thomas S. McNeil formulated an analgesic nostrum in 1848, most likely from opium, alcohol, ether, and other proprietary ingredients. Massaged on externally as a pain liniment, his so-called pain exterminator could also be mixed in sweetened water and imbibed as an analgesic, antitussive, and antidiarrheal. A familiar antebellum remedy for both Union and Confederate forces in the Civil War, McNeil's Pain Exterminator would be manufactured by McNeil's pastor and then successors, for more than a half-century after McNeil's accidental drowning in 1874.

"To nitrous oxide, chloroform gives way": Was Dr. W.J.A. DeLancey's poetic license in advertising inspired?

Born in New Hampshire but raised in Massachusetts, 14-year-old William J.A. DeLancey became "the man of the house" after the accidental death of his father. Amiable and good humored, young DeLancey supported his widowed mother and his three sisters until the girls all reached maturity. After he married, DeLancey moved to Illinois and took up dentistry, eventually settling in Centralia. Following anesthesia training back east at Manhattan's Colton Dental Association, DeLancey returned to Centralia. There he practiced the Coltonian method of testing freshly made nitrous oxide upon himself before using the gas upon patients. Before his training at Colton Dental, DeLancey had advertised in Centralia newspapers only in prose. After he began administering laughing gas to his patients and to himself, DeLancey waxed poetic and began advertising in heroic couplets in local newspapers.

From Colton's guess to Andrews' table to Bunnell's paper to Spencer's card: Misleading the public about nitrous oxide's safety.

Famous for pioneering the oxygenation of nitrous-oxide anesthetics, Chicago surgeon Edmund Andrews trusted the Manhattan-based Colton Dental Association's claim that they had conducted 75,000 nitrous-oxide anesthetics without a single mortality. Those statistics were cited in Andrews' 1870 journal article on anesthetic risks and then, remarkably, advertised on the business cards of dentist James M. Spencer, Jr., of Gouverneur, New York.

From ACE to ACENO: How America's Munson added Harley's British mixture to nitrous oxide.

An Ohio dentist, Corydon Munson, patented a gasometer with an attachment for vaporizing trace amounts of volatile general anesthetics or their mixtures into unoxygenated nitrous oxide. After vaporizing a variant of George Harley's ACE mixture into nitrous oxide, Munson branded his own novel anesthetic combination as ACENO.

James M. Clyde, D.D.S., M.S.A.: The Canadian-American who rescued the Chicago Post-Graduate School of Anaesthesia.

The Chicago Post-Graduate School of Anaesthesia (PGSA) commenced with the opening of the Columbian Exposition, eight miles north of that Chicago World's Fair in May of 1893. When PGSA founder Samuel J. Hayes, D.D.S., M.S.A., forsook Chicago to tend to his moribund son back in Pittsburgh, Hayes' fellow professor, James M. Clyde, D.D.S., M.S.A., kept the PGSA from closing.

Emerging from tabloid scandal: Dr. U.K. Mayo's Vegetable Vapor extends nitrous oxide's anesthetic duration.

Urial K. Mayo (1816-1900) was a successful Boston dentist who was plagued by personal scandal. In 1883 he patented extending the duration of nitrous-oxide anesthesia with an alcoholic tincture of hops and poppies.

Robert Alden Fales, the fifteen-year-old criminal chloroformist.

An ex-employee of a Newark straw hat factory, 15-year-old Robert Alden Fales battered the factory's cashier Thomas Haydon on the head multiple times with a wooden staff. Fales then applied a chloroform-soaked handkerchief to Haydon's nose until the cashier stopped moving. Arrested and convicted of murder, Fales had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. At 23 years of age, the criminal chloroformist died in jail from tuberculosis.

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.

From Pulling Teeth to Pulling Legs: How Dentist-Anesthetist Samuel J. Hayes Was Mistaken for President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Newspaper editor AH Beitch recorded an anecdote in which a group of barbers gave complimentary treatment to dentist-anesthetist SJ Hayes, whom they had mistaken for US President Rutherford B. Hayes.

James M. Osgood: An Inventor Behind Sprague's "Self-Watching" Apparatus for G.Q. Colton's Revival of Nitrous-Oxide Anesthesia.

Inventor J.M. Osgood enabled a fellow Massachusetts inventor, A.W. Sprague, to manufacture heat-regulated nitrous-oxide generators. These generators assisted New Yorker G.Q. Colton in opening exodontia franchises nationwide which revived the use of nitrous-oxide anesthesia.

From Dental to Mental Institutions: A Quadruple Threat of Nitrous-Oxide Administration Before and During Mental Asylum Admission.

During the 19th century, patients undergoing anesthesia for surgical and dental procedures were at risk of being given hypoxic or dilute nitrous oxide on four separate occasions. Primary and secondary saturation during surgery could account for two administrations of 100% nitrous-oxide anesthesia, while both diagnostic and therapeutic doses of dilute nitrous oxide were frequently administered in mental asylums.

An Allied Anesthetic?: De Preissac's Political Cartoon of Hitler's Surgery.

During World War II, the French Resistance used political cartoons while fighting for France's freedom from Nazi domination. Reprinting Jean de Preissac's 1945 political cartoon of Allied leaders operating as Hitler's anesthetist and surgeons, a commemorative postcard was issued on the 20th anniversary of the radio broadcast credited with founding the French Resistance, General Charles de Gaulle's "Appeal of 18 June 1940."

From Dental to Mental Institutions: Elmer McKesson's Secondary Saturation with Nitrous Oxide.

As popularized by Elmer McKesson, MD, "secondary saturation" with nitrous oxide could expose patients to a second burst of 100% laughing gas to relax their muscles to assist surgeons. On rare occasions, this technique could provide a second opportunity for hypoxic brain damage and possible admission postoperatively to insane asylums.

Related Gunmen Paddock Committed Murder-Suicide in 1888 and in 2017.

Genealogical and periodical research reveals that two distantly related gunmen surnamed Paddock, a retired dentist-anesthetist and a retired accountant, committed murder-suicide in 1888 and in 2017, respectively.

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.