Crawford Williamson Long was an American surgeon and pharmacist best known for his first use of
inhaled diethyl etheras an anesthetic. Although his work was unknown
outside a small circle of colleagues for several years, he is now recognized as
the first physician to have administered ether anesthesia for surgery.
Long
was born in Danielsville, Madison County, Georgia on November 1,
1815. He received his M.D. degree at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1839. After observing the same physiological effects with
diethyl ether (‘ether’) that Humphry
Davy had described for nitrous
oxide in 1800, Long used ether
for the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of a patient, James M.
Venable, in Jefferson, Georgia. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from
Venable and used ether as an anesthetic in amputations and childbirth. The
results of these trials were published in 1849 in The Southern Medical and Surgical
Journal.
Crawford Long was a
member of the Demosthenian
Literary Society while a student
at the University of Georgia and shared a room with Alexander Stephens, Vice President of
the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Long was a cousin
of the western legend, Doc
Holliday.
Long died in Athens, Georgia in 1878. The Emory University-operated Crawford W. Long Hospital in downtown Atlanta was named in his honor in 1931
and retained that name for 78 years.
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