Crawford Williamson Long (November 1, 1815 – June 16, 1878) was an American surgeon and pharmacist best known for his first use of inhaled sulfuric ether as an anesthetic.

[4] His father was a state senator, a merchant and a planter, and named his son after his close friend and colleague, Georgia statesman William H.

[1] It was here he met and shared a room with Alexander Stephens, future Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Long transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after spending only a year at Transylvania College, and was exposed to some of the most advanced medical technology of the time.

After these articles surfaced, Long began documenting the details of his experiments, collecting patient accounts, and notarizing their letters.

My friends think I would be doing myself injustice, not to notify my brethren of the medical profession of my priority of the use of ether by inhalation in surgical practice.

However, he did not receive significant recognition until Marion Sims, a New York surgeon, published the first major article about Long's contribution.

In fact, Long administered ether to 7 patients, none of whom felt any pain during their operations, several years prior to Morton's 1846 public exposition.

I have not been able to ascertain the name of the dentist, if you know the history of Dr. Wells, you can possibly asertain (sic) whether he travelled South at the time mentioned.

Secondly, he wished to wait to see if another medical practitioner came forward to counter Morton's claims to discovery, a physician who potentially discovered anesthesia prior to himself.

After reading about Morton's demonstration in the Medical Examiner, Long began asking his patients to submit affidavits corroborating his discovery.

[citation needed] William Welch reportedly said, We cannot assign to him any influence upon the historical development of our knowledge of surgical anesthesia or any share in its introduction to the world at large.

"[16][page needed] In 1879, a year after Long's death, the National Eclectic Medical Association declared that he was the official discoverer of anesthesia.

He assumed nothing, and was thoroughly truthful in looks, tone, manner and action; lived simply, treated everyone courteously, and walked humbly before God.

Gentle, forbearing, faithful to every wise instinct, he kept the covenant of a heart's true love until his days were numbered.

The minor heroisms which make up so large a share of a physician's experience, and of which the world knows so little, wrote many a paragraph in the annals of his life.

We shall give the manly virtues of Christian integrity of Crawford Long a dwelling place where so many of the elect of our life already gathered.

[24] A statue of Long stands in the crypt of the United States Capitol as one of the two designated monuments to represent Georgia in the National Statuary Hall Collection (the other is his college roommate, Alexander Stephens).

[citation needed] Long's childhood home was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 6, 1977.