At the
same time Senator Wil- [*printer's error--double line and missing text]
revive the gratuity for Morton in Congress, but the decision of the French
Academy was in men's minds, and a vicious precedent proved stronger than
reason.
I saw Doctor Morton for the last time about nine months before his death;
and the impression his appearance made on me was indelible. He was
walking in the path before his house with his eldest daughter, and he
seemed like the victim of an old Greek tragedy--a noble Oedipus who had
solved the Sphynx's riddle, attended by his faithful Antigone.
In July, 1868, a torrid wave swept over the Northern States which carried
off many frail and delicate persons in the large cities, and Doctor
Morton was one of those who suffered from it. He happened to be in New
York City at the time, and went to Central Park to escape the feeling of
suffocation which oppressed him, but never returned alive. He now lies in
Mount Auburn Cemetery, with a modest monument over his grave erected by
his Boston friends, with this epitaph composed by Dr. Jacob Bigelow:
WILLIAM T. G. MORTON
INVENTOR AND REVEALER OF ANAESTHETIC INHALATION BY WHOM, PAIN IN SURGERY
WAS ARRESTED AND ANNULLED BEFORE WHOM, IN ALL TIME, SURGERY WAS AGONY
SINCE WHOM, SCIENCE HAS CONTROL OF PAIN
Doctor Morton was a self-made man, but not a rough diamond,--rather one
of Nature's gentlemen.
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