The early history of anaesthesia in Canada: the introduction of ether to upper Canada, 1847.

ALTHOUGH CLARK administered ether for a dental extraction in January 1842 and Long used it to produce anaesthesia for surgical operations in March 1842, the use of this agent did not become widespread until more than four years later. It was following a demonstration at the Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16,1846, when William Morton administered ether ("Letheon") to Gilbert Abbott for the excision of a neck tumour by John C. Warren, Professor of Surgery, that the news of surgical operations performed during insensibility spread. Reports of the use of ether vapour appeared from the eastern United States, and on December 19, 1846, it was first used in both London, England, and Dumfries, Scotland. In Canada, the earliest accounts of the use of ether originate in Quebec. Dr. James Douglas of Quebec City used it during amputation of toes some time before February 20,1847, on which date Mr. Webster, a dentist, administered ether while Dr. Nelson of Montreal, assisted by his son Horace, removed a tumour from a woman's thigh. Both predated the achievement of Dr. Edward Worthington of Sherbrooke, who claimed to have performed the "First capital operation in Canada under the influence of sulphuric ether ... on 14 March 1847". The early use of ether in Ontario is not documented in the medical literature. No medical journals were published in the region until April 1851,° when The Upper Canada Journal of Medical, Surgical and Physical Sciences was inaugurated. This journal, which survived less than four years (until September 1854), included no mention of the early use of ether in this area. It has been stated that the first recorded use of anaesthesia in Ontario was with chloroform, given by Dr. Duncan Campbell, of Niagara, on May 31,1848. However, since news of the application of sulphuric ether to produce insensibility during surgical operations had travelled so rapidly from Boston to Europe and Quebec, I considered it unlikely that this was ignored in Upper Canada. As there were no contemporary medical journals, I reviewed the available Upper Canada newspapers published between October 16, 1846, and the end of June, 1847, and from these I compiled a history of ether in what is now Ontario.