Morton was the first person to show publicly that ether could be used as an anesthetic during surgery. After his demonstration, the use of ether as an anesthetic spread rapidly to Europe.

Morton was born August 9, 1819, to James and Rebecca Morton. His father was a farmer. Though Morton wanted to be a physician, his father could not afford the tuition, so Morton settled for a diploma from the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1840. He then practiced dentistry for several years. In 1844, he married Elizabeth Whitman. They had five children.

Several people had used ether as an anesthetic before Morton. Another dentist, Dr. Elijah Pope, extracted a patient's tooth using ether in January, 1842. Two months later, Crawford Williamson Long, a physician, used ether to remove cysts from a patient's neck. Neither Pope nor Long publicized their applications of ether, and so Morton was first given credit for using...