Sir, on 18 November 1846 Henry J. Bigelow announced the discovery of surgical anaesthesia by William Thomas Green Morton.1 Since then, the scientific community has, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted the authorship of the discovery, but a review of the literature casts a different light on the situation.2,3,4,5,6

It is not certain whether Morton (1819-1868; Fig. 1) followed studies in dentistry at the College of Dental Surgery in Baltimore or whether he was taught by other professionals.7 His life was marked by a series of conflicts and personal rivalries, mainly deriving from his wish to achieve economic success, a desire which led him to apply for a patent for the anaesthetic Letheon (granted 12 November 1846), recognition of which the US Government was later to reject.8 However, on 21 December 1846, he obtained another patent in England.

Figure 1
figure 1

W.T. G. Morton

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Together with his partner Horace Wells (1815-1848), he travelled to a series of US cities to try and sell the patent rights of Letheon. Wells was disappointed and felt cheated when he realised that the anaesthetic was no more than sulphuric ether, adulterated with an oil of orange, and went as far as saying that Morton had no right to claim to be the 'discoverer of anaesthesia' and that he himself had more right to the authorship of the discovery.9

Morton had agreed to pay his former professor of chemistry, Dr Charles T. Jackson (1805-1880), a percentage of all the money gained with Letheon but, since the business of the patent proved to be ruinous, enmity sprang up between them. Jackson considered himself to be the author of the discovery and argued against Morton's receiving the $100,000 established by the US Congress.10

Another important setback for Morton was the law suit he filed against the New York Eye Infirmary. Morton's lawyer stated that he had warned Morton that the only thing that could be patented was the design of the inhaler for the administration of Letheon (Fig. 2).11 It was only the renowned obstetrician J. Y. Simpson (1811-1870) who recognised Morton's priority as the discoverer of anaesthesia in a letter that he sent him on 19 November 1847.12

Figure 2: Ether inhaler.
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Source: Smithsonian. National Museum of American History

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Nevertheless, on 10 January 1901, the writer Evelyn B. Simpson (1856-1920), the daughter of the obstetrician, claimed the authorship of surgical anaesthesia with chloroform for her father, in a letter sent to the NY Wall Street Journal.2 Crawford W. Long (1815-1878) had used ether as an anaesthetic since 1842 but he did not communicate his results until 1849.13 The American medical community, however, did not accept his attempts to attribute the discovery to himself because Morton had had the skill to publish his findings three years earlier. Perhaps that skill was his main contribution to the discovery.