Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1675

CHARLES THOMAS JACKSON (1805-1880) A manual of etherization. Published for the author by J. B. Mansfield 1861 134 pp., illus. 19 cm.

Soon after William Thomas Green Morton (see No. 1873) showed that ether could be used successfully as a surgical anesthetic, Jackson sought to establish his claim to this important discovery. Morton was successful in having a bill introduced in Congress authorizing an appropriation of $100,000 for the discoverer of anesthesia, but the dispute waged by Jackson as well as by supporters of Crawford W. Long (1815-1878) ultimately led to the bill's failure. Jackson graduated from Harvard with a degree in medicine but practiced for less than five years. After his graduation in 1829, he lived in Europe where he continued his medical studies and studied geology before returning to the United States in 1823 to open a medical practice. He left medicine in 1836 to become a geologist and analytical chemist in Boston and was also active in a number of geological projects between 1837 and 1849. Jackson was afflicted with mental illness in later life and died in an asylum near Boston. In addition to his conflict with Morton, Jackson claimed that he had given Samuel Morse the basic ideas for telegraph when they met while returning from Europe in 1832. However, Jackson never developed his speculations beyond a preliminary working model. He also made a disputed claim to the discovery of guncotton. The present work was not published by Jackson until fifteen years after the introduction of ether as an anesthetic. The book contains a brief history of anesthesiology, a great deal of material which supports the role Jackson played in the development of ether, a thorough discussion on the production, purification, and testing of the anesthetic agents then in use, and a comprehensive account of anesthesiology as it was then practiced. After carefully analyzing Jackson's book, W. Stanley Sykes, the noted British anesthetist, stated "But his book, which no doubt contains all the evidence in his favour, in addition to quite a lot of propaganda, is not convincing and does not prove or even support his extensive claims" (Essays on the first hundred years of anaesthesia. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1961. Vol. II, p. 131).

See Related Record(s): 1873

Cited references: Osler 1440; Waller 5083

Gift of John Martin, M.D.