Harvard professor James C. White was also a graduate of the Medical School. In 1898, at a meeting of the Vienna Club, he read these extracts from a diary he kept while at Harvard from 1853 until 1855. His entry for October 8, 1853, notes, “Many operations at hosp[ital] as one of the p[a]t[ient]s refused to take ether. Saw the difference in an operation before & after discovery of ether.” The first public surgical operations using ether anesthesia had been performed at Massachusetts General Hospital just seven years before. Excerpt from the diary of James C. White from when he was enrolled at Harvard Medical School
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