The scene is a 19th century house; a man knocks on the door for his appointment. The door opens and standing there is the doctor in a stiff, dry coat covered in blood. The man is there for surgery and the doctor takes him to the designated operating room. As the doctor places the man in the chair, the man sees dried blood and sharp instruments. He begins to have second thoughts about the surgery and struggles to escape. Two doctor's assistants hold him down while the doctor hits him on the head to knock his patient out. The poor man screams in pain as he wakes up from the doctor starting the operation. Stories like that are now just distant memories of the past. This is all thanks to a drug called ether that makes people unconscious so they don't feel any pain from the surgery. The discovery of ether transformed the world of medicine and led to multiple forms of anesthesia for many painless surgeries leading to even better outcomes in the future. William Thomas Green Morton was a small-town American dentist in the 1800s. One day he met a patient with a severe toothache but the patient was scared of the pain he would encounter. He asked Dr. Charles Jackson for nitrous oxide, but was given ether and told it had the same properties. The dental operation was a painless success. Morton began testing ether on his dog, his goldfish, insects, and even himself. At one point he knocked his dog out for so long he thought he was dead. After finding that the use of ether had been successful, he tried it on some of his patients with great success. He was then ready to demonstrate his findings in front of a crowd at the Medical University of Massachusetts. After successfully having a f... half of paper... Invention of ether anesthesia. Np, 2008. Web. October 1, 2013. “Dr. William Morton uses ether for first time for pain-free surgery.” Examiner.com. Np, 2013. Web. 01 October 2013. Fradin, Dennis Brindell. "We conquered pain": the discovery of anesthesia. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Division, 1996. Print."Health." Biography of William Morton. Np, 2013. Web. 01 October 2013. "History of Anesthesia". WordFocus com. Np, 2013. Web. 01 October 2013."How anesthesia works." How things work. Np, 2013. Web. 01 October 2013. Pizzo, William W. Anesthetics. San Diego: Lucent, 2004. Print.Staff, Mayo Clinic. "General anesthesia." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 19 January 2013. Web. 01 October 2013. "William Morton Story Ether's Painless Surgery (1846)." Story of William Morton, first public demonstration of anesthetic. Np, 2013. Web. 01 October. 2013.