Crawford Long

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Crawford Long.

Crawford Williamson Long (November 1, 1815 – June 16, 1878) was an American physician and pharmacist. He was born in Danielsville, Madison County, Georgia. He received his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. He performed the first surgical operation in general anesthesia induced by ether.

Although William T.G. Morton is well-known for performing his historic anesthesia on October 18, 1846 in Boston, Massachusetts, C.W. Long is now known to be the first to have used an ether-based anesthesia.

After observing the same effects with ether that were already described by Humphry Davy in 1800 with nitrous oxide, C.W. Long used ether the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of his patient, Mr. James M. Venable. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from Venable and used ether anesthesia in amputations and childbirth. The results of these trials were published several years later (in 1849) after Morton's publication. An original copy of his publication is held in the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

He 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. He died in Athens, Georgia.

Long County, Georgia and Emory University's Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia are named in his honor. The Crawford W. Long Museum in downtown Jefferson, Georgia, has been in operation since 1957.