The Con Man Who Invented Anesthesia

The timeline for the development of surgical anesthesia is filled with steps that make it difficult to pinpoint who invented it. First there was alcohol and opium, which required dangerous amounts to help at all with surgery. Then there was nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, which kept scientists so busy getting high that its use in surgery was delayed considerably. 

William Morton turned to ether, which had already been used in medical cases. He wasn't even the first to use it in surgery. See, Morton wasn't a surgeon, but a dentist. But Morton got the credit for ether, because it happened to work when he publicly demonstrated it. And he didn't get what he really wanted out of it, because it wasn't patentable. The real winners were the rest of us, because so many doctors and scientists worked on the problem, today we have a variety of drugs that can dull the pain of surgery. (via Damn Interesting)