Morton, William Thomas Green (1819-1868)

US dentist who in 1846, with Charles Thomas Jackson (1805-1880), a chemist and physician, introduced ether as an anaesthetic. They were not the first to use it but they patented the process and successfully publicized it.

Morton was born in Massachusetts. He set up his own dental practice in Boston in 1844 and began investigating ways to deaden pain during dental surgery. Jackson advised him to try ether. Later, Morton attempted to claim sole credit as its discoverer and spent the rest of his life in costly litigation with Jackson.

In 1846, Morton extracted a tooth from a patient under ether and later in the same year staged a public demonstration of ether anaesthesia in an operation at the Massachusetts General Hospital to remove a facial tumour.

Morton's contribution to medicine lay in making the value of anaesthesia generally known and appreciated. Crawford Long (1815-1878) had in 1842 successfully used ether anaesthesia during an operation, although he did not publish this work until 1849.