Page:The First Anesthetic, the Story of Crawford Long - Frank Kells Boland.djvu/7



Many acknowledgments are due in the writing of this book, and I make them with grateful appreciation. Part of the material, especially under "Ether Controversy Retold," is original, but a large amount (for which I have tried to give full credit) necessarily had to come from other sources.

By no means is the book a complete history of the discovery of surgical anesthesia. Its name indicates that it has to do with the part played by one man, Crawford Williamson Long. The whole story, a fascinating, interminable one, has been well covered by others, particularly during the past few years, in celebration of Morton's first demonstration before a medical audience in Boston in 1846.

Of recent works which have been especially helpful to me are: History of Surgical Anesthesia, by Thomas E. Keys; Man Against Pain, by Howard Riley Raper; Victory Over Pain, by Victor Robinson; Centennial of Surgical Anesthesia, an Annotated Catalogue, by John F. Fulton and Madeline E. Stanton; and the Anesthesia Centennial Number of the Journal of the History of Medicine, October, 1946. I am indebted principally to four writings: Crawford W. Long and the Discovery of Anesthesia, by his daughter, Frances Long Taylor; Crawford W. Long, the Distinguished Physician-Pharmacist, by his former employee, Joseph Jacobs; the article of George H. Bunch on Charles Thomas Jackson; and the U. S. Congress Reports on the Ether Discovery, 1852–1863, lent from the library of John Farquhar Fulton. Profound obligations are expressed to Dr. Fulton for the privilege of studying this important volume.

Several libraries and individuals have given indispensable information and materials; Miss Mildred Jordan, and the A. W. Calhoun Medical Library, of Emory University;