[MORTON, WILLIAM T.G. 1819-1868.]


RICE, NATHAN PAYSON. 1829-1900. Trials of a Public Benefactor, as illustrated in the Discovery of Etherization. New York: Pudney & Russell, 1859. 8vo (185 x 120 mm). Engraved frontispiece, 3 plates. Publisher's blind-stamped cloth. Stains to cover, offsetting from frontispiece, browning.Provenance: Sarah Carrington (presentation inscription from Morton: "Mrs. Sarah Carrington with the kind regards of Wm. T. G. Morton"). FIRST PUBLISHED EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY. The first, and until recently, the only full-length biography of William T. G. Morton, the Boston dentist who in 1846 demonstrated to the medical profession the efficacy of sulfuric ether as a general surgical anesthetic. Completed in three months, Trials of a Public Benefactor was first issued in October 1858 in an un-illustrated advance "press copy" edition with title-page dated 1858. The published edition, with the date changed to 1859 and quotations from Shakespeare and Burns added to the title, appeared a few months later. Trials of a Public Benefactor, with its self-serving rendition of Morton's role in the discovery of ether anesthesia, is a key document in the history of the ether controversy. "As the account most readily available, this has been the principal document that historians and researchers have depended upon for what they believed were the facts of the matter ... Over-reliance on the Rice version, to the exclusion of looking beyond it, has largely been responsible for legitimizing the claim of William T.G. Morton while at the same time abrogating the claims of his principal rivals, Horace Wells and Charles T. Jackson, or, at least, diminishing the critical roles they played in Morton's ultimate success" (Wolfe p 62). Fulton & Stanton IV.66; Osler 1432; Wolfe Tarnished Idol pp 62; 407-11.