Dr. Long's theory was formed in 1841, but he waited for some time before testing it, in the hope that a case of surgery of some importance--the amputation of an arm or a leg--might fall in his practice. On the 30th of March, 1842, Dr. Long removed a tumor from the neck of Mr. James M. Venable. On the 6th of June, the same year, another small tumor was removed from the neck of the same patient, and both operations were painless. Mr. Venable inhaled sulphuric ether, and the effect of it was to render him insensible to the pain of cutting out the tumors.
Dr. Long had told Mr. Venable that he would charge little or nothing for removing the tumors under the influence of ether. The bill rendered for both operations amounted to $4.50; but, small as the bill was, it represented the discovery and application of ether in surgical practice,--one of the greatest boons to mankind. Up to that time no patient under the surgeon's knife had ever been able to escape the horror and pain of an operation.
Dr. Long did not at once print the facts about his discovery. He wanted to make assurance doubly sure. He waited in the hope of having an important case of surgery under his charge, such as the amputation of a leg or an arm. But these cases, rare at any time, were still rarer at that time, especially in the region where Dr. Long practiced. He finally satisfied himself, however, of the importance of his discovery, but, having waited until 1846, found that at least three persons--Wells, Jackson, and Morton--had hit on the same discovery, and had made publication of it. Morton patented ether under the name of "Letheon," and in October, 1846, administered it to a patient in the Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 1844, Horace Wells, a native of Vermont, discovered that the inhalation of nitrous-oxide gas produces anaesthesia. He was a dentist. He gave it to his patients, and was able to perform dental operations without causing pain. Thus we may see how the case stands. Long produced anaesthesia in 1842; that is to say, he caused his patients to inhale sulphuric ether in that year, whenever he had a painful operation to perform, and in each case the operation was painless.
In 1846, when the surgeons of the Massachusetts General Hospital performed painless operations on patients, after administering to them Morton's patented "Letheon," which was his name for sulphuric ether, there came about a great war of pamphlets, and it ended tragically. Long had never made any secret of the substance which he used. He gave information of it to all the surgeons and doctors with whom he came in contact; and he was not in any way concerned in the conflict that was carried on by Jackson, Morton, and Wells. He simply gathered together the facts of his discovery, proved that he was the first physician to perform painless operations in surgery, and that was the end of it so far as he was concerned.