The person to whom all scientific men now attribute the honor of this
discovery, or invention, is Dr. William T. G. Morton; and, although in
that matter he was not without slight assistance from others, as well as
predecessors in the way of tentative experiments, yet it was Doctor
Morton who first proved the possibility of applying anaesthesia to
surgical operations of a capital order; and it was he who pushed his
theory to a practical success. It may also be admitted that Columbus
could not have discovered the Western Hemisphere without the assistance
of Ferdinand and Isabella; but it was Columbus who divined the existence
of the American continent, and afterwards proved his theory to be true.
There is an underlying similarity between the labors and lives of
Columbus and Morton, in spite of large superficial differences.
William Thomas Greene Morton was born August 19, 1819, in Charlton,
Massachusetts, a small town in the Connecticut Valley. His father was a
flourishing farmer and lived in an old-fashioned but commodious country
house, with a large square chimney in the centre of it. William was not
only a bright but a very dexterous boy, and was sent to school in the
academy at Northfield, and afterwards at Leicester. It is a family
tradition that he early showed an experimental tendency by brewing
concoctions of various kinds for the benefit of his young companions, and
that he once made his sister deathly sick in this manner.
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