The First Anesthetic: The Story of Crawford LongIn 1846 William Thomas Green Morton (1819 1868) performed the first publicly witnessed surgery to use ether as an anesthetic when he removed a neck tumor from a patient at Massacusetts General Hospital. News of the dramatic event quickly spread and Morton was erroneously credited with discovering the procedure. Few people at the time knew that Crawford W. Long (1815 1878), a physician from Danielsville, Georgia, was the true pioneer of this important