Crawford Long

American physician (1815–1878)

Long, who was born in Danielsville, Georgia, received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. He then practiced in the small Georgian village of Jefferson where he became probably the first physician to perform surgery using ether as an anesthetic. (There is one earlier record of the administration of ether, for a tooth extraction: in January 1842, William Clark gave ether to a patient whose tooth was then removed by Elijah Pope.)

The idea of using ether came to Long after he had engaged in ‘ether frolics’ – wild parties at which ether was inhaled for exhilarative effect. Long noticed that he developed many bruises during such parties but had no recollection of sustaining any injuries. This suggested to him the possibility of using it more constructively to provide surgical anesthesia. Consequently on 30 March 1842, Long removed a small tumor from the neck of an etherized patient who assured him, when he regained consciousness, that he had not experienced any pain. Long followed this up in July by painlessly amputating the toe of a young etherized boy. However, Long had little chance to use his dramatic discovery in major operations and did not publish details until 1849. By this time William Morton had already (1846) given a public demonstration of the use of ether as an anesthetic and Long thus received little credit for his discovery.

Crawford Williamson Long (1815-1878), American physician, is credited with the first use of ether as an anesthetic in a surgical procedure.

Crawford Long was born in Danielsville, Ga., on March 1, 1815. At the age of 14 he entered Franklin College in Athens (later the University of Georgia), graduating in 1835. The following year he served as principal of an academy in Danielsville while studying medicine with a doctor in a nearby town.

In 1836 Long entered the Medical Department of Transylvania College at Lexington, Ky., and in 1838 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, from which he received his medical degree in 1839. He then went to New York, where he studied surgery for 18 months. In 1841 he established a practice in Jefferson, Ga. In the summer of 1842 he married Mary Caroline Swain.

On March 30, 1842, Long used ether as an anesthetic during the removal of a tumor from the neck of James M. Venable. His use of ether came from observations made at "ether frolics." Ether, in limited quantity, produces exhilaration rather than unconsciousness, and the inhalation of ether for this effect was common. Long participated in many ether parties and often noticed that participants received bumps and bruises but experienced no pain. After his success with ether in the surgery on Venable, Long used it whenever possible; but for reasons that are not clear, he made no effort to make his discovery public until 1848, when he announced it to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. By then, however, nitrous oxide as an anesthetic had been introduced by Horace Wells, and ether anesthesia had been publicly demonstrated by William Morton and Charles T. Jackson of Boston.

Although Long is historically credited with the first use of ether, his delay in announcing his discovery lessened recognition for him and robbed him of a primary position in the discovery of modern anesthesia. In 1849 Long published a claim to the discovery of ether in the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal entitled "An Account of the First Use of Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation as an Anesthetic in Surgical Operations, " and this claim became part of a long and bitter contest over priority of discovery.

In 1851 Long moved to Athens, Ga., where he built a thriving practice and spent the rest of his life. During the Civil War he enlisted in the Georgia infantry. After the war he was appointed surgeon to the military post in Athens. He died on July 16, 1878.

Further Reading

Long's daughter, Frances Long Taylor, wrote Crawford W. Long and the Discovery of Ether Anesthesia (1928). A biography that draws on earlier sources and new information is Frank Boland, The First Anesthetic: The Story of Crawford Long (1950).

American surgeon and pioneer anesthetist who was among the first (1842) to use ether as an anesthetic.

Crawford Long
Crawford Long
Born	November 1, 1815 Danielsville, Georgia
Died	June 16, 1878 (aged 62) Athens, Georgia
Nationality	United States
Fields	Medicine
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Known for	Anesthesia induced by ether

Crawford Williamson Long (November 1, 1815 – June 16, 1878) was an American physician and pharmacist best known for his early use of diethyl ether as an anesthetic.

Contents 1 Life and work 2 References 3 Further reading 4 See also 5 External links

Life and work

Long was born in Danielsville, Madison County, Georgia. He received his M.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. After observing the same physiological effects with diethyl ether ("ether") that Humphry Davy had described for nitrous oxide in 1800, Long used ether for the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of a patient, James M. Venable, in Jefferson, Georgia. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from Venable and used ether as an anesthetic in amputations and childbirth. The results of these trials were published in 1848 in The Southern Medical and Surgical Journal. An original copy of this publication is held in the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Crawford Long was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society while a student at the University of Georgia and shared a room with Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Long was a cousin of the western legend Doc Holliday.

Long died in Athens, Georgia in 1878. The Emory-University-operated Crawford Long Hospital in downtown Atlanta, Georgia was named in his honor in 1931 and retained that name for 78 years. In 2009 the hospital was renamed "Emory University Hospital Midtown" ^[1]. The Crawford W. Long Museum in downtown Jefferson, Georgia has been in operation since 1957. A statue of Crawford Long stands in the crypt of the United States Capitol as one of the two designated monuments to represent the state of Georgia.

Although William T. G. Morton is well-known for performing his historic demonstration of ether anesthesia on October 16, 1846 in Boston, Massachusetts, Long is now regarded as the first to have administered ether anesthesia for surgery. Morton is generally credited with the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital, yet Long had informed several surgical colleagues who similarly administered ether in their practices. In 1854, Long requested William Crosby Dawson, a U.S. Senator, to present his claims to the attention of Congress.^[2]

References

1. ^ http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2009/February/Feb16/Hospital.htm
2. ^ Northen, William J.; Graves, John Temple (1910). Men of Mark in Georgia: A Complete and Elaborate History of the State from Its Settlement to the Present Time, Chiefly Told in Biographies and Autobiographies of the Most Eminent Men of Each Period of Georgia's Progress and Development. 2. Atlanta, Georgia: A. B. Caldwell. pp. 131 – 136. http://www.archive.org/details/menofmarkingeorg02nort. 

Further reading

• Crawford, W. M. (February 1984). "More on the ether operation". N. Engl. J. Med. 310 (8): 534 pmid = 6363934. 

• "Crawford W. Long (1815-1878) discoverer of ether for anesthesia". JAMA 194 (9): 1008–9. November 1965. doi:10.1001/jama.194.9.1008. PMID 5321288. 

• Das, Sakti; Nation Earl F. (September 2004). "Hugh Hampton Young, the anesthesiologist". Urology 64 (3): 628–30. doi:10.1016/j.urology.2003.10.057. PMID 15351622. 

• Keys, T. E.. "Historical vignettes. Dr. Crawford Williamson Long (1815-1878)". Anesth. Analg. 51 (6): 86. PMID 4564633. 

See also

• Seishū Hanaoka - first physician to use general anaesthesia

External links

• "Find-A-Grave Profile for Crawford Williamson Long". http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7311270. Retrieved 2009-01-16. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)