October 16 in Victorian History
What the Victorians were up to on this date, year by remarkable year.
1846
The first public anaesthesia
At Massachusetts General Hospital, dentist William Morton administers ether to a patient while surgeon John Warren removes a neck tumour. Gentlemen, this is no humbug, Warren declares. Surgery without agony is born -- within months, ether and chloroform will be used across the Victorian world.