January 11, 2002

The MGH Archives and Special Collections recently accepted a generous donation of rare books and pamphlets. Sylvia Sanchez — whose late husband Guillermo C. Sanchez, MD, was a familiar figure at the MGH for 50 years before his death in August 2000 — donated the items in his memory. An internist and primary care physician, Sanchez also was chairman of the MGH Archives Committee and an enthusiastic advocate for the preservation of the hospital's historical legacy. His interests in the history of medicine, and of the MGH in particular, are reflected by the titles in this welcome addition to the hospital's historical collections.

The donation consists of 73 items, most of which date from the 19th century. Among them are several rare pamphlets relating to the "ether controversy," a heated debate over who was responsible for the discovery of anesthesia. Many MGHers are familiar with the famous event, when William T.G. Morton gave the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia in the Ether Dome Oct. 16, 1846. However, three other men also claimed some or all of the credit.

Of special interest in the new collection is a rare eight-page printing of a groundbreaking article by MGH visiting surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow, MD, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (predecessor to the New England Journal of Medicine). Bigelow's article, published Nov. 18, 1846, was the first appearance in medical literature of the news of surgical anesthesia. Surgery in the civilized world was, in only a few weeks' time, radically transformed.