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Elton Romeo Smilie, the Not-Quite Discoverer of Ether Anesthesia

Martha E. Stone, MS^*, Marlene R. Meyer, MD, JD, LLM, and Theodore A. Alston, MD, PhD

From the *Treadwell Library, and Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Theodore Alston, MD, PhD, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit St., Boston, MA 02114. Address e-mail to talston{at}partners.org.

Abstract

Like William T.G. Morton, Elton Romeo Smilie (1819–1889) was raised in Massachusetts, attended medical school in New England, practiced dentistry there, strove for clinical invention, and moved to Boston. In October 1846, both announced that inhaled ethereal preparations achieved reversible insensibility in surgical patients. Smilie published a report in the Boston Med Surg J 3 wk before Bigelow used that forum to broadcast Morton's Ether Day. Smilie's preparation was an ethereal tincture of opium, and, as he mistakenly believed the opium to be volatile and important, he ceded priority to Morton for ether anesthesia. The two authors collaborated on chloroform, but Smilie soon headed off in the Gold Rush to California. It is tempting to speculate that Charles T. Jackson and Morton were indebted in part to Smilie.