General anesthesia – The most significant American discovery in medicine and its bitter history
Medical Review (Med. pregled), 2026, 62(1), 63-68.
R. Komitova1, L. Glomb2, M. Hristamyan3
1Department of Infectious Diseases, Parasitology and Tropical Medicine, Medical Faculty, Medical University – Plovdiv
2Expert Council for the Medical Specialty “Clinical Virology” and the National Expert Specialized Medical College of the Bulgarian Medical Association
3Department of Epidemiology and Disaster Medicine, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University – Plovdiv
Abstract: The discovery of surgical anesthetics is the story of inhaled anesthetics. Without inhalational agents, surgical anesthesia would not exist. Before their use as anesthetics, nitrous oxide and diethyl ether were 19th-century recreational drugs. Diethyl ether is considered the first modern inhalation anesthetic, even though that was not its original purpose. In 1842, the American physician Crawford Williamson Long made the crucial connection between ether and surgical anesthesia, However, Long did not publish his findings until 1849, which cost him recognition as the discoverer of anesthesia. The anesthesia history involved the lives of several people, notably Horace Wells, William Morton (a pupil of Wells), and Charles Jackson – three Americans who changed the lives of their generation and the generations to come. It is unfortunate how much effort they invested in making everyone claim to be the primary discoverer of ether, which ultimately contributed to their downfall. Crawford Long is the only one among this group who remains largely unaffected by the denial of recognition. The introduction of surgical anesthesia was the first significant contribution that American medical science made to the world, and it remains the greatest of all American discoveries in medicine. The debate over who deserves credit for the discovery remains unresolved, just as it was in the mid-19th century.
Key words: history, inhalation agents, anesthetics
Address for correspondence: Prof. Radka Komitova, MD, PhD, e-mail: radka.komitova@yahoo.com