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A number of articles and chapters in the pediatric anesthesia credit the first use of ether anesthesia to Crawford Long in an operation performed on an 8-year-old male slave. However, Long never gave the ages of any of his patients in any of his letters, articles, or communications. The 1840 and 1850 federal censuses give ages but no names for male slaves, two of whom are candidate patients. One possible age for the first was 22 years. The second was younger than 15 years and was identified as a child by a student working with Long. Thus, the date of the first pediatric anesthetic where documentation is reasonably certain is January 8, 1845, given the limitations in the use of slave censuses. After the Ether Dome demonstration in 1846, ether anesthesia for children was rapidly adopted in Boston and London.
ESTABLISHING THE FIRST PEDIATRIC operation under anesthesia, a historic milestone of the modern specialties of pediatric anesthesia and pediatric surgery, is not a straightforward task. Crawford Long, the original practitioner of ether anesthesia, never mentioned the ages of any of his patients in his publication in 18491 and in records and statements he later submitted to document his achievement.2 Determining the first use of ether anesthesia in a child requires pre-Civil War census data from Jackson County, Georgia, his home at the time.
Those familiar with the history of anesthesia and the controversy in establishing the priority of discovery of ether anesthesia2, 3 would not be surprised of Long's lapse in documentation. In failing to publish, he nearly lost recognition of first use of anesthesia to William Morton, who administered ether in the famous Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Ether Dome demonstration on October 16, 1846. Long belatedly reported his achievement in 1849 after hearing Morton had petitioned Congress for a handsome monetary prize as the discoverer of ether anesthesia. Long, writing to capture his claim, focused on documents that established March 30, 1842, as the date of the first use of ether anesthesia on two operations performed on James Venable: Affidavits by Venable, witnesses, and dated entries in his account book for the 25 cents' worth of ''sulfuric ether'' under Venable's name.2, p. 63
Several modern authors identify Long's second patient, a boy specifically...