Fig. 1.
The Wood Library-Museum’s timeline wall of anesthesia history: “From Darkness to Light.” Time marches forward from right-to-left along this 55-foot wall. Early use on surgical patients of obtunding or confusing agents such as alcohol, opium, marijuana, or deliriant herbs—use symbolized as darkness—was broken by shafts of light introduced in 1842 by an ether pioneer, Georgia’s Crawford Long, M.D., and in 1844 by a nitrous oxide pioneer, dentist Horace Wells. As time moves forward from right to left, an explosion of light flashed in 1846 after dentist William Morton publicly demonstrated surgical ether anesthesia. News of general anesthesia radiated from Morton’s Boston to reach all six populated continents.