Photographs of early ether anesthesia in Boston: the Daguerreotypes of Albert Southworth and Josiah Hawes.

摘要

Publications on the history of anesthesia may have an image of a photograph, engraving, or painting of early ether anesthesia in Boston, Massachusetts. Closer inspection of the photographs in various publications reveals that there are five known photographs that were taken in the original amphitheater (now called the Ether Dome) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Four photographs (figs. 1-4) were reproduced in a book on the daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes. No publication on the history of anesthesiology has reproduced more than three of the five known photographs. Richard J. Wolfe's book on Robert C. Hinckley (1853-1941) and his well-known painting of the first demonstration of ether at MGH contains three of the photographs (figs. 2, 3, and 5) taken at MGH.2 Wolfe's later book on William T. G. Morton, M.D. (1819-1868), contains a different set of three photographs (figs. 1-3) ? The five photographs, all believed to have been taken by Southworth and Hawes, have not been published together in any previous publication in the field of anesthesiology or photography.