In 1933, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company produced a short silent file, “The Advent of Anesthesia”, depicting the experiments of W. T. G. Morton with ether anesthesia and recreating the first public demonstration of the operation on Gilbert Abbott in 1846. The film uses the Ether Dome and other facilities at Massachusetts General Hospital and the cast includes hospital staff and personnel, including John Peabody Monks as Morton, Somers Hayes Sturgis as Gilbert Abbott, and Edward D. Churchill as surgeon John Collins Warren. Edward D. Churchill preserved a file of still photographs of the actors. Shown here are Drs. Monks, holding a replica of the first inhaler, Sturgis, with a tumor on the side of his neck, and the administration of ether with the inhaler.
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Notes:
Churchill, Edward D. (Edward Delos), 1895-1972. Papers, 1840-1973. [H MS c62]
Reproduced from originals donated by Frederick P. Churchill to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1973.
