Trials of a Public Benefactor: As Illustrated in the Discovery of Etherization

Rice, Nathan P.; William Thomas Green Morton

Pudney & Russell, 1859

[History of Anaesthesia] Bound in publisher's black cloth, with gilt lettering. Good binding. Corners slightly bumped. Head/tail of spine chipped. First edition, presumed first issue "press copy" variant. (This copy without frontispiece portrait or plates, the first edition didn't have any) Title-page dated MDDDLIX, with quotations from Shakespeare and Burns, also with tipped in handbill ca. 1868 or later with the text of the epitaph on Morton's tomb. Extra-illustrated with later (20th century) portrait of William Thomas Green Morton tipped in at front.  Light, occasional foxing. xx, 460 pages. Bibliotheca Osleriana 1432.  William Thomas Green Morton (1819-1868), was an American dentist who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anaesthetic in 1846.