Pre-U. S. A.

Sirs: Almaden mine at which you glance in this week's issue [TIME, April 22, p. 80] & which you announce as soon to run again is running full tilt now & has been for some months.

Well, maybe not full tilt, but a score or more "hard-rock" miners are gouging, chipping, blasting at those cinnabar-streaked granite tunnel walls, bringing out sacks of ore every day, to be "cooked" in the retorts there on the steep shank of the mountain. A week or so ago "Hap" brought out one rock that was might' nigh pure cinnabar. It weighed 130 Ib. He brought it through seven miles of tunnel from the very gizzard of the ancient mine.

Bobby [my son] & I, on a two-year walking tour of the Americas, went through that mine two weeks ago, by the grace of a friendly, tipsy miner. . . .

"The Indians used to come here for their war paint," he told us. "Then the Spaniards mined it. With slave labor, too. There's signs of it. Must be 300 years old if it's a day.

You'll see timbers in here put in long before this was the U. S. A.!" We walked, waded, crawled & scrambled & slid through the endless tunnels--"there's 500 miles of tunnel in this mountain," the boys said--down 200 feet of sharply sloping rock piles, peered down fearful shafts, heard about the mine's famous ghosts and were mighty glad to get out of there, I tell you.

We saw them "cooking" the rocks, drops of mercury rolling out the long pipes. One man's take for one day cooked him a flask of "quick" & he worked no more that week, I bet.

For they're all out-of-work miners working Almaden on their own time, faithfully sending, each man, a percentage of all he makes to the estate. Each pays a percentage to the silent man who owns the retorts, gives another percentage (50) to the cooker who retorts all the ore, keeps each man's cook separate, looks after it for him. . . . How gay they all are! . . . "We quit when we're tired or when we've made enough for that week," he said. There was an air of comradery, merriment, & rough heartiness that almost made a hard-rock miner of my young son. . . .

When big industry gets hold of it, there'll be more ore taken out faster, I have no doubt.

And on top of the fabulous old mine, the flowers will still be growing in sheets of gold & blue & pink--petal to petal, as John Muir once said.

JUNE BURN Bakersfield, Calif.

P.S. The 130-lb. "nugget" of cinnabar & the four sacks which yielded a flask of "quick" were extremely unusual. Most of the men do well to make laborer's wages. Many do better occasionally. Sometimes they find such rich ore that to drill the highly volatile stuff is dangerous: the fumes. But again some miner will pick away for days in the all but airless devil's pocket & have hardly 50 pounds of rich ore to show for it.

Anesthesia

Sirs: Your recent reference to where credit lies for the "discovery" of ether in its relation to anesthesia prompts me to send you the photo-static copy of a letter in the research files of Paramount Studio where a great deal of work has been done in preparation for a picture on the subject. [Based on Fulop-Miller's Triumph Over Pain--ED.] It is from Daniel Webster, written Dec. 20, 1851, addressed to Dr. W. T. G. Morton and states: "In reply to your letter of the 17th instant, I would say that having been called upon, on a previous occasion, to examine the question of the discovery of the application of ether in surgical operations I then formed the opinion which I have since seen no reason to change, that the merit of that great discovery belonged to you, and I had supposed that the reports of the Trustees of the Hospital, and of the Committee of the House of Representatives of the U. S. were conclusive on this point." The weight of Webster's views on this subject is considerable, especially in the light of the fact that whereas the backers of Dr.

Crawford Long's claim set the date of his discovery in the year 1842 there is no evidence that ether was used to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers during the first year of the war with Mexico as much as four years later.

Nor does it appear that ether was used in any single hospital in the world to allay the agony of surgical operations prior to the demonstration by Dentist Morton at the Massachusetts General Hospital on Oct. 16, 1846. The very word "anesthesia" sprang into being some few weeks later.

. . . Morton, who was not a well-educated man, gathered his scientific knowledge from many quarters, including Horace Wells, his friend and associate, but his courage was his own and he stood alone in the face of the skeptical science of surgery on that fateful October day. Wells and the others had dropped away from the great effort only to reappear with many protestations later.

Postmaster Farley's placing Dr. Long's likeness upon a postage stamp in honor of his having been the "discoverer" of ether leads to a warranted discussion of what the word "discovery" means. As to this, Professor John Ware of Harvard Medical School in a letter dated April 16, 1861 to Dr. Charles Jackson (another claimant) said: "The discovery of the fact that the state of anesthesia is a safe one and thus available in practice is due to Morton. James Watt did not originate the steam engine. George Stephenson did not first introduce the railway.

Dr. Jenner did not first notice the protective powers of cow pox and yet the world justly regards them as those to whom it owes the advantages it has enjoyed from these improvements."

... If there are postage stamps enough to go around let there be one for Dr. Long but let there assuredly also be one for Morton. . . .

ARTHUR HORNBLOW JR.

Paramount Pictures Inc. Hollywood, Calif.

Sirs:

There is no question but that the "ether controversy" was an extremely bitter affair which, so I have heard, degenerated into a mud-slinging contest. Even in the third and fourth generations some bitterness remains which is most unfortunate. Our family has generally accepted the verdict of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, which decreed one of the Montyon prizes to Dr. Jackson for the discovery of etherization and a similar prize to Dr. Morton for the application of this discovery to surgical operations. Each had presented the Academy with a brief setting forth their respective claims.

I would be content to rest the matter as it stands above but may I refer you to the October issue of The National Magazine, 1896, which contains a very interesting article upon this question from Dr. Jackson's side. There is also an article by E. W. Emerson in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1896. There is also available the Report (minority) to the House of Representatives, vindicating the rights of Charles T. Jackson to the Discovery of Anesthetic Effects of Ether Vapor presented to the House on the 28th of August 1852, by Edward Stanly and Alexander Evans, members of the select committee on the ether discovery. I am convinced that should you investigate this matter, you will find that of all those who claim the honor of the discovery, Dr. Jackson was by far the most learned and scholarly and consequently the one most apt to discover ether. . . .

If it is possible, I would prefer to stay out of this ancient quarrel but I would appreciate it if you would revise your article on pp. 73-74 of your April 22 issue, giving my great-grandfather the credit which is his due.

JACKSON BIRD

Fay School Southborough, Mass.

Sirs:

TIME'S article (April 22, p. 73) on anesthesia, considered as an attempt to expound accurately an historical debate, leaves something to be desired. I note:

"Most doctors believe with their sainted masters, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir William Osier, and Dr. William H. Welch that the real originator of anesthesia was Dentist William Thomas Green Morton."

Dr. Welch in the Ether Day Address at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1908 said, "The honor of making the first trial of anesthetic inhalation in surgical operations belongs to Crawford W. Long . . . then living in Jefferson, Jackson Co., Ga."

Dr. Osier in Historical Documents Relating to the History of Anesthesia mentions Dioscorides (circa 100 A.D.), Esdaille, who practiced mesmerism, and Long as anesthetists before Morton.

Dr. Holmes, when asked to which man the credit be given replied, "To e(i)ther." . . .

"Nobody has the clear credit."

Among responsible historians there is not a shadow of dispute as to who has the clear credit for every portion of the contribution to anesthesia.

LOGAN CLENDENING Kansas City, Mo.

Sirs:

In TIME for April 22, under "Medicine," is an article headed "Who Discovered Anesthesia?" The two groups best qualified to pass on the respective claims of the various contestants, namely the American Medical Association and the American Dental Association, decided that the honor of being called the discoverer of anesthesia was due Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of Hartford, Conn. The American Dental Association voted this honor to Wells in 1864 and the American Medical Association did likewise in 1870.

May I call your attention to several errors in this article:

1) Horace Wells was not "Dazzled with hopes of a fortune. . . ." If he had been, he would have patented his discovery as he had patented two previous commercial discoveries, a coal sifter and a shower bath. When urged to patent this discovery, Wells declared, "No, let it be as free as the air we breathe."

2) Horace Wells did not have a patient die under an anesthetic.

3) Horace Wells became mentally deranged from self-experimentation, with chloroform, not from "brooding over his failure."

4) Nitrous oxide was reintroduced as an anesthetic agent by Gardner Q. Colton in the 1860s. It was not "forgotten until 1900."

5) Dr. William H. Welch did not believe "the real originator of anesthesia was Dentist William Thomas Green Morton. . . ." He gave that honor to Horace Wells.

6) Oliver Wendell Holmes did not "coin the word anesthesia." He suggested the word "anesthesia" and indicated in his letter the origin of this word and its definition. . . .

Most students of the history of anesthesia are convinced that it wasn't because Long was "Too modest to publish his early experiments" that "he laid his ether bottles aside." Crawford W. Long was simply not impressed with the fact that he had a great discovery in his hands, and so he "laid his ether bottles aside" until he read of Wm. T. G. Morton's work, and then three years after Morton's announcement he published his claim as the discoverer of anesthesia.

W. HARRY ARCHER, D.D.S.

Assistant Professor Dept. of Anesthesia & Exodontia University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pa. >-The fact about the discovery of anesthesia appears to be that there is much to be said on several sides.--ED.

A Bit Irritated

Sirs: A question concerning the make-up of your magazine (to which I have subscribed for some time) has recently puzzled me.

Why, in such columns as Milestones, p. 76 of the April 22 issue, and People, p. 56 of the same issue, are the cuts not surrounded by the material which is related to them? In Milestones, for instance, the picture of Mr. & Mrs. Jessel & Friend (thank God I wasn't asked to perform that marriage ceremony) is on one page--surrounded by Mr. & Mrs.

Douglas Fairbanks' new daughter, while the story related to the picture is mostly on the next page.

When I see a picture, I want to read the story with it right away--and it irritates me just a bit to have the adjacent printed matter deal with something totally different. . . .

REV. JOHN H. SHILLING Woodmere Methodist Church Detroit, Mich.

-- How do other TIME readers feel?--ED.

Listening Post

Sirs:

To put me out of business by simply ignoring me won't do. If you haven't seen a copy of the Chicago Times since last October, about 400,000 other people have daily. They know that my shortwave listening post produces copy for my column "We're Listening" five days a week except when atmospheric static gets me down.

Reason for this outcry from the Western Wilds is TIME of May 6, "Two U. S. listening posts make it their business to hear almost the whole works," of Europe on the air. The two: CBS listening post and Princeton Listening Centre. The omitted fact: my listening post has operated since January 1939, that is, before CBS started; and published a day-by-day analysis since Oct. 10, 1939, or before Princeton got under way. It also provided the bulk of the material incorporated in Propaganda Via Shortwave (Feb. 26) by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. . . .

My contention is that a comprehensive job of radio propaganda analysis requires listener, analyst, and editor all in the same person. . . . The trouble is that the important stuff is strewn at random among the trash, and lots of times discernible only by its absence, as in the case of the "Allied change of mind." To get weary is therefore fatal for the post listener as I experienced when CBS and UP picked up Nazi Admiral Luetzow's statement about the scuttling of the Nazi destroyers at Narvik. As a rule the admiral talks so humdrum that he deserves only one quarter of an ear but that time everybody but me thought he had big news. . . .

B. E. LUCAS

The Times Chicago, ILL.

-- To Chicago Times' Lucas, all credit for a fine job of listening. But only Superman could out-listen CBS and Princeton, whose big Listening Post staffs are on the job as much as 19 hours a day, seven days a week. -- ED.

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