The WLM has begun to digitize its rare book collection for access and preservation. View sample titles from our Ether Controversy Collection:

Bigelow, Henry Jacob. Ether and Chloroform: A Compendium of their History, Surgical Use, Dangers and Discovery, 1848.

Bigelow, Henry Jacob. Insensibility During Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation, 1846.

Bowditch, Nathaniel Ingersoll. The Ether Controversy. Vindication of the Hospital Report of 1848.

Circular. Morton’s Letheon, 1847.

G.Q. Colton's Statement on the Discovery of Anaesthesia,1886.

Erving, Henry Wood. Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut Committee on Historical Publications: The Discoverer of Anaesthesia: Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, 1933.

Historical Memoranda Relative to the Discovery of Etherization, and to the Connection with it of the late Dr. William T. G. Morton. Prepared by the Committee of Boston Chosen to Raise a Morton Testimonial Fund, 1871.

Lord, Joseph L. & Lord, Henry C. A Defence of Dr. Charles T. Jackson's Claims to the Discovery of Etherization, 1848.

McManus James. Notes on the History of Anaesthesia, the Wells Memorial Celebration at Hartford, 1894. Early Record of Dentists in Connecticut, 1896.

Morton, Elizabeth Whitman. The Discovery of Anaesthesia. Dr. W.T.G. Morton and his Heroic Battle for a New Idea. How Painless Surgery Began Fifty Years Ago, 1896.

Morton, William James. The Invention of Anaesthetic Inhalation of Discovery of Anaesthesia, 1880.

Morton, William James. Memoranda Relating to the Discovery of Surgical Anesthesia, and Dr. William T.G. Morton’s Relation to this Event, 1905.

Proceedings of the Erie County Medical Society on the Morton Testimonial, Buffalo, C.C.F. Gay, M.D. President, February 4, 1865.

Proceedings of the Medical Profession of Detroit on the Morton Testimonial, May 12, 1865, Edward Kane, M.D.

Proceedings on Behalf of the Morton Testimonial, 1861.

Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward. The Mastery of Pain. A Triumph of the Nineteenth Century, 1894.

Smith, Truman. [An Address to an Audience of Ladies.] 1858.

Wales, Joseph. Discovery by the late Dr. Horace Wells, of the Applicability of Nitrous Oxyd Gas, Sulphuric Ether and Other Vapors, in Surgical Operations, Nearly Two Years Before, the Patented Discovery of Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W.T.G. Morton, 1852.

Warren, J. Collins. The Influence of Anaesthesia on The Surgery of the Nineteenth Century, 1906.

Warren, Jonathan Mason. The History of Anaesthetics from an American Point of View, 1868.

Welch, William H. A Consideration of the Introduction of Surgical Anaesthesia, 1908.