Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fates of the men involved in the first use of anesthesia in surgery in Boston, on October 16, 1846 and its aftermath read like a tragedy by Aeschylus or Racine. Fenster, a columnist for American Heritage and a contributor to the New York Times, ably renders the three main characters, who typify that common 19th-century American combination of brilliance, ambition and mental instability. Charles Jackson, related by marriage to Ralph Waldo Emerson, was more renowned for his geological studies than his medical practice. Horace Wells had been the first to use nitrous oxide in dentistry. William Morton, who designed the delivery device for the ether and administered it, had enjoyed a long career as a con man. After their "unwilling collaboration," they argued about who actually made the discovery and should reap the financial rewards. Jackson, who claimed that Samuel Morse stole the idea for the telegraph from him, was supported by Emerson in his Atlantic Monthly. He spent his final years in a mental institution. Wells was championed by the Connecticut legislature. Later, addicted to chloroform, he committed suicide in jail. Morton failed in his efforts to patent a mixture of ether and oil of orange. After some years unsuccessfully lobbying Congress to reward him, he collapsed in Central Park in 1868 and died en route to a hospital. Fenster jumps between the figures' backstories somewhat confusingly, and her occasionally laughable rhetorical devices would give a high school yearbook editor pause. Nonetheless, this extensive book will attract fans of the history of medicine and 19th-century Americana. Photos and illus. (Aug. 5) Forecast: A 25-city national radio campaign coupled with author appearances in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia will give this book the exposure necessary to sell its 25,000 initial printing.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Ether Day is the unpredictable story of America's first major scientific discovery -- the use of anesthesia -- told in an absorbing narrative that traces the dawn of modern surgery through the lives of three extraordinary men. Ironically, the "discovery" was really no discovery at all: Ether and nitrous oxide had been known for more than forty years to cause insensitivity to pain, yet, with names like "laughing gas," they were used almost solely for entertainment. Meanwhile, patients still underwent operations during which they saw, heard, and felt every cut the surgeon made. The image of a grim and grisly operating room, like the one in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, was in fact starkly accurate in portraying the conditions of surgery before anesthesia.

With hope for relief seemingly long gone, the breakthrough finally came about by means of a combination of coincidence and character, as a cunning Boston dentist crossed paths with an inventive colleague from Hartford and a brilliant Harvard-trained physician. William Morton, Horace Wells, and Charles Jackson: a con man, a dreamer, and an intellectual. Though Wells was crushed by derision when he tried to introduce anesthetics, Morton prevailed, with help from Jackson. The result was Ether Day, October 16, 1846, celebrated around the world. By that point, though, no honor was enough. Ether Day was not only the dawn of modern surgery, but the beginning of commercialized medicine as well, as Morton patented the discovery.

What followed was a battle so bitter that it sent all three men spiraling wildly out of control, at the same time that anesthetics began saving countless lives. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Ether Day is a riveting look at one of history's most remarkable untold stories.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060195231
• ISBN-13: 978-0060195236
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #458,789 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tangled Tale of Attribution, September 12, 2001

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Who invented anesthesia? If you learned a name for this invention, it was probably William Thomas Green Morton. He turns out to be the most colorful and rascally character in the wonderful _Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It_ (HarperCollins) by Julie M. Fenster, but he isn't the only one. The invention of anesthesia was one of the most divisive issues in medicine in the nineteenth century. Fenster has dug up an amazing story of the origin of the first great advance in modern medicine, and told it in a lively and dramatic fashion. Opium, alcohol, ice, Mesmerism, and even bleeding into a faint had been used to avoid the horrors of surgery on a conscious patient, with little success. Reliable anesthesia was the first great advance in modern medicine.

Nitrous oxide, laughing gas, used to be a party and theatrical intoxicant. After an exhibition of its use, Horace Wells, a dentist, realized it cut pain. He began to use it in dental extractions. Morton met Wells in 1842, after a youthful career of spectacularly defrauding creditors in various big cities, and decided to take up dentistry under Wells's tutelage. Morton later met Charles T. Jackson, a chemist, who maintained that he had suggested to Morton the use of ether for dental extractions. Morton was eventually invited to administer ether before a rapt audience at the Massachusetts General Hospital on 16 October 1846, which is known by historians of anesthesia as Ether Day. It went perfectly. Morton tried the shocking precedent of patenting ether, and when that didn't work, he spent his life petitioning Congress for a reward for his invention, an award opposed by Jackson and Wells.

Indeed, Morton got medals and fame for what he had done, but it never made him rich, and rich was what he wanted to be. Wells experimented with chloroform, which was an effective anesthetic but more dangerous than ether, and became addicted to it. He was arrested for throwing acid onto prostitutes while he was chloroformed, and killed himself in jail. Jackson never got the recognition he was sure he deserved for the invention of ether, which only compounded the bitterness he felt that he had also given Morse the idea for the telegraph. He spent the last seven years of his life in an asylum. None of the inventors got what he wanted. This is a complicated tale, wittily told. We have no one hero on which we can bestow the title "The Inventor of Anesthesia" (and Fenster reports a competing and prior claim by Dr. Crawford Long in Georgia, who used ether to removing a swelling on a patient's neck in 1842). It is a messy history, entertainingly told.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One book about anesthesia that won't put you to sleep., October 13, 2002

By	Robert Adler "science writer & author" (Santa Rosa, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It (Paperback)

Surgical anesthesia was America's first great scientific gift to the world. Since ancient times, and throughout the history of Europe, surgery, however necessary, was an unimaginable nightmare. Even the simplest procedure understandably stirred intense dread. And almost any sugery could prove fatal because of pain and shock. Of necessity, surgeons had to work at lightning speed, amputating a limb or "cutting for the stone" in minutes.

All this changed in 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, when a young man named Gilbert Abbot underwent the first surgery using ether anesthesia. The surgeon was Dr. John C. Warren, whose position and reputation allowed him to take this radical step. The person administering the ether was an ambitious dentist, William Morton, one of the unlikely and ill-fated heroes of the ether story.

As Julie Fenster reveals the events that led to and followed from the inception of ether anesthesia, she deftly reveals the human foibles of the key participants: the high-living, risk-taking Morton, the idealistic Horace Wells, and the brilliant and arrogant Charles Jackson. Anesthesia was a great gift to mankind, but it proved the undoing of its flawed discovers.

It's a great story, well told and well worth reading.

Robert Adler
Author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, 2002).

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ether Day " An Honest Review", August 3, 2001

By A Customer

Ms. Fenster has told a story that concerns almost every person on the planet and yet the average individual knows nothing about. I am talking about anaethesia. It was so interesting that I completed the book in 4.5 hours. Her thoughtful characterizations of the people involved in the discoveries was balanced perfectly with the historical content. This book helped me to see how such an enormous discovery affected the people at the time. It was the best work of medical history I have ever read. Thank you Ms. Fenster for such a thoughtful and insightful book on such a fascinating topic.