The earliest ether anaesthetic in British North America - a first for Saint John, New Brunswick?

Joseph A. MacDougall Bsc CRCFC 0 2 3 0 From the Departmentof Anaesthesia, Saint John Regional Hospital , P.O. Box 2100, SaintJohn, New Bnanswick,E2L 4L2 1 In the Charter of the City of Saint John the word "Saint" is spelled in full. For many years , however,i~:was abbreviatedby local custom to St. John. On April 25, 1925 , City Common Council decided to reverl to the original Saint, to distinguish theirCity fromSt. John's , Newfoundlandand St. John,Quebec 2 Sincere thanks to: Dr. Ian Keith, Department of Anaesthesia, Saint John Regional Hospital; Dr. Peter Toner , Professor, Depart- ment of History , University of New Brunswick , Saint John; Dr. Oskar Sykora , Faculty of Dentistry, Dalhousie University; Dr. A.D. Gibbon and Frank O'Brien, two local historians; Mrs. Barbara McCrossin, Secretary, Department of Anaesthesia, Saint John Regional Hospi- tal; Mr, Donald Ward, artist; Mr. Brian Daley and staff of the Media Productions Department, Saint John Regional Hospital; Mr. and Mrs. W. Foster Hammond (present owners of the Peters House) 3 Saint John Free Public Library; Dr. Carl R. Trask Health Sciences Library; New Brunswick Museum Library; W. K Kellogg Health Sciences Library; Halifax City Regional Library; New Brunswick Archives Dept. of Historical and Cultural Resources; Ward Chipman Library, University of New Brunswick, Saint John; University of New Brunswick Library; Salem Public Library and the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts; The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine and the Boston City Library , Boston, Massachusetts Literature relating the early history of ether anaesthesia in New Brunswick which, as part of British North America was a British colony until 1867. is reviewed. There is documentary evidence that the first ether anaesthetic for dental surgery in what is now Canada, was administered in 1844 in St. John. New Brunswick. There is also documentary evidence that thefirz~tether anaestheticfor general srtrgery was administered in St. John on Monday, January 18, 1847, rather than in Montreal in March, 1847. - before Long used it in Jefferson, Georgia. The use of this agent did not become widespread until four years laler following the first public demonstration of ether anaesthesia by William Morton at the Massachusettes General Hospital. On October 16, 1846, Morton administered ether ("Letheon") to Gilbert Abbott for the excision of a neck turnout by John C. Warren, Professor of Surgery at Harvard) The news of surgical operations performed during insensibility spread rapidly. Reports of the use of ether appeared in medical journals and the lay press of the Eastern United States. There is also substantial agreement that ether was first used in Britain on December 19, 1846, in London and Dumfries simultaneously, a There is no agreement, however, on its first use in Canada. Evidence published to date is inconclusive. Matsuki, in his detailed history of ether anaesthesia in Canada gives a verified chronology. 5 FIGURE l Movements of the P.S. Acadia December 1-16, 1846. Dr. James Douglass of Quebec amputated the toes of a man under ether anaesthesia, t~ This anaesthetic, which precedes Dr. Nelson's, was previously thought to have been the first in Canada, the conclusion being based largely on inference, from an unscientific differentiation dependent upon the terms "lately" and "more lately. "~ Not surprisingly, there were also failures: Dr. Campbell at the Montreal General Hospital failed to anaesthetize a patient with ether. ~ His report, together with editorial comment, appeared in the same issue of the journal, t:' By Septemher 6, 1847, Dr. J. Crawford of McGill College had tried unsuccessfully to use ether for sedating a patient with traumatic tetanus before successfully anaesthetizing a 14-year-old boy for the amputation of a leg, ~3 Today we know that the news of ether anaesthesia spread quickly from Boston. Dr. Bigelow's paper encouraged many to try ether. Wright states: News of ether anaesthesia had first reached Britain through the Boston Medical and Surgical journal and Dr. Begelow's letter to his friend Dr. BooR, which was carried in the Acadia from Boston to Liverpool arriving on December [6, 1846. Sykes 15 and Ellis 16 (1958) explored possible travel arrangements in considerable detail. Through Sykes we are indebted to the Cunard Shipping Line for the following information: "We have established from our sailing records that the Acadia, one of the four wooden paddle steamers with which Samuel Cunard and his partners inaugurated their steamship services between Britain and North America in 1840, arrived at Liverpool on December 16, 1846. Iler voyage took j u s t under 14 days, the average approximate time taken by Atlantic Steamers during the 1840"s." Further, the Deputy Keeper of the South Kensington Science Museum stated: "We h a v e a note that in 1847 The Cunard P.S. (paddle steamer) Mibernia (1843) crossed from Halifax to Liverpool in 9 days 1 hour 30 minutes at a mean speed of 11.67 knots. This was however, a record at the time for the normal service speed of the vessel is stated to have been about 9.25 knots." At her usual speed, the Acadia would have taken about eleven and a half days from Halifax (Figure 1). The reference to Halifax confirms thai in 1846-1847 the four ships of the British and North American Steam Packet Company sailed regularly between Liverpool and Boston, calling at Halifax on the outward and return voyages. This is suggested in, "Warden of the North" by Raddall. ~7 In 1846 Joseph Howe, pushing for an extension of the telegraph from St. John to Halifax, suggested that Halifax could become a clearing house for world news, "as the FIGURE 2 Dentistical Operations: The New BrunswickCourier, Saturday,January23, 1847. first point of west bound Cunarders and the last port of the east bound. ''~7 The following documentary evidence indicates the movements of the P.S. Acadia in December, 1846, Mail from Halifax, which would have been cleared on Thursday, December 3, arrived in St. John at 10 pm, on the following Monday night, five days later. Ordinarily the mail came express which took two days, but in December 1846, the buget lor this service had run out for the year and the ordinary mail was used. This took two to three days longer. 19 On Friday December 18, 1846, one of the seventeen St. John newspapers, 2~ the Weekly Chronicle printed the entire article: S "Insensibility During Surgical Operations Produced By Inhalation" Read b e f o r e the B o s t o n Society o f Medical l m p r o v e m e n L N o v e m b e r 9, 184-6 a n a b s t r a c t having b e e n previously r e a d before the A m e r i c a n A c a d e m y o f Arts a n d Sciences, November 3rd, 1846. By Henry J a c o b Bigelow M.D., o n e o f the s u r g e o n s of the M a s s a c h u s e t t e s General Hospital. (From the Boston Medical a n d Surgical Journal) On Saturday, January 23, 1847, the New Brunswick Courier, printed the notice illust (...truncated)