Lot 265E email save

MEDICINE. BIGELOW. Insensibility during surgical

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Offprint from: The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Vol. XXXV, number 16. [Boston: for H. Bigelow, 1846]. 8vo (240 x 150 mm). 4 leaves, uncut and unopened. Housed in a half morocco slipcase. Condition: slightest toning. the first separate printing of the discovery of surgical anesthesia. Perhaps the single greatest American contribution to medical science in the 19th century was Bigelow's description of the first use of sulfuric ether as an anesthetic during surgery. A Boston dentist, W.T.G. Morton began using ether in his practice in 1846. Once his successes with the drug came to the attention of Bigelow at Harvard, the latter arranged for its use by John Collins Warren at Massachusetts General Hospital in the autumn of that year. Morton and Warren decided to seek a patent for their process and were reluctant to disclose the particular mixture they used. Bigelow forced their hand with this detailed paper, which omits any discussion of patents. "It has long been an important problem in medical science" he writes, "to devise some method of mitigating the pain of surgical operations. An efficient agent for this purpose has at length been discovered..." A rare and key work in medical history. Cushing B380; Garrison-Morton 5651; Grolier Medicine 64A; Heirs of Hippocrates 1859; Norman 232; Osler 1355; Wellcome II, p. 166.

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