 Born in Charlton, Massachusetts, William T. G. Morton was the son of James Morton, a farmer, and Rebecca (Needham) Morton  Excelled in school  clerk, printer, and salesman

 Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1840  1843 Morton married Elizabeth Whitman of Farmington – condition ?  Quit dental join medicine

 In the autumn of 1844, Morton entered Harvard Medical School  attended the chemistry lectures of  Dr. Charles T. Jackson,  who introduced Morton to the anesthetic properties of ether.  Morton then also left Harvard.

 A lot of patients with root cleaning in dental treatment were feeling pain  Morton first tested ether on animals and then upon himself to measure the possible after effects.  When he was convinced of its safety, he decided to put it to use on a patient.

 On September 30, 1846, Morton performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient

 Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow arranged for a now-famous demonstration of ether October 16, 1846  at the operating theater of the Massachusetts General Hospital

 Dr. John Collins Warren painlessly removed a tumour from the neck of a Mr. Edward Gilbert Abbot  Morton tried to hide the identity of the substance Abbott had inhaled, by referring to it as "Letheon",Letheon

 AIR ether patient

 Who used it first ??

 It was actually employed in 1842 by Dr. Crawford W. Long, at the University of Pennsylvania, in some minor cases of surgery.  but he would seem to have lost confidence in his method and afterwards abandoned it

 In December 1846, Morton applied to Congress for "national recompense" of $100,000,  was complicated by the claims of Jackson and Wells as discoverers of ether, and so Morton's application proved fruitless.

 In 1852 he received an honorary degree from the Washington University of Medicine  Demonstration of control of science over pain

 Morton's notoriety only increased when he served as the star defence witness in that of John White Webster  accused of the murder of Dr. George Parkman. Morton's rival

 the French Academy of Medicine awarded Jackson and Morton a joint prize of 5,000 francs, Morton turned it down on the grounds that it rightfully belonged to him alone  Suit for $  spent on court expenses  Pauper

 Morton performed public service yet again  when he joined the Army of the Potomac as a volunteer surgeon,  applied ether to more than two thousand wounded soldiers during the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness.

 Morton was in New York City in July 1868 when he went to Central Park to seek relief from a heat wave, where he collapsed and died soon after

 In 1871, a committee published  The Historical Memoranda Relative to the Discovery of Etherization  to establish Morton as the inventor and revealer of anaesthetic inhalation

 1944 Paramount Pictures film The Great Moment.