Crawford Long

 Artist: E.M. Long; oil on board

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.

Crawford Long has no known affiliations with Maryland or MedChi, however we were given a small portrait of him in 1950.