William Thomas Green Morton (* 9 August 1819 in Charlton, Massachusetts; "† 15 July 1868 in New York) was an US-American physician and Wegbereiter of the employment of the Narkose in surgery and dentistry. It was responsible for the first public demonstration of the ether as inhalation

William T.G. Morton was originally a dentist and studied under Horace Wells in hard Ford, Connecticut. The two became late partner. Morton gave then dentistry up and studied Kieferchirurgie at the Baltimore college. In the year 1842 it opened a practice as a dentist. He co-operated 1842 and 1843 with Horace Wells. Wells used approximately one year later into its Dentalpraxis laughing gas with the treatment of its patients. After numerous experiments with its pain patients Wells its wanted to demonstrate laughing gas also publicly in Boston, which however a failure became.

Morton however had decided for the Zahnprothetik. If the roots of the old teeth should be removed, one needed a more effective anaesthetic than laughing gas, imagined Morton. A stronger Narkosemittel should ago. It began to look for it. Taps an acquaintance, the physician and scientist the Charles T helped it. Jackson to try it nevertheless once with ether. Its effect was of course for a long time well-known, but for application in the surgery still undiscovered.

On 30 September 1846 evenly frost with so strong toothache came into Mortons practice that it agreed with the extraction with a testing of the ether. When the treated one from its awaked, he said Morton that he had not felt any pain when tooth pulling. Although the newspaper in Boston already reported of it on the subsequent day, the world passed over the possibility for the pain-free treatment, existing now. The wurmte Morton, which believed firmly a grandiose thing to have carried out which had to lead to fame and wealth.

It arranged therefore with agreement of the leading surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. John C. Warren, a demonstration of its idea before physicians and medical students. On 16 October 1846 was it so far (fig.). Morton anaesthetized the patient Gilbert Abbott with the help of its invention, the ether ball, so that Dr. Warren could away-operate a tumor at the neck of the patient. Warren, which actually rejected such procedures two years before after the luckless demonstration of Wells, was inspired by the new possibilities (Warren: "Gentlemen, it's NO humbug"). This event is considered as the birth of the scientific Narkosemedizin.

The press reported of the overwhelming success of the new pain-free method. After the demonstration Morton tried the substance, which had inhaled Abbott (ethers), to hide. It called it "Letheon". It wanted to let the substance patent and from it then profit.

Few weeks later, in November 1846, received Morton and Jackson a patent on the However became fast clear, which concerned it with "Letheon" ethers. Over the question, whom the priority is entitled with this invention, it came to a series of law cases, released particularly from Jackson. The costs of it ruined Morton, particularly hoped for percentage of profits payments for its discovery hardly arrived. Physicians and hospitals used simply ethers. 1868 died Morton become impoverished and successfully with patenting never.

Some see in Morton the inventor and discoverer of the anaesthesia. However it was not first, the ether to the surgical used. That was Crawford Williamson Long.

See also: Horace Wells, Crawford Williamson Long

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