• Anesthesiology · Dec 2019

    Historical Article

    Etymology of Letheon: Nineteenth-century Linguistic Effervescence.

    • Rajesh P Haridas, Michael Gionfriddo, and George S Bause.
    • From the Harry Daly Museum and Richard Bailey Library, Australian Society of Anaesthetists, North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (R.P.H.) Departments of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio (G.S.B) Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Schaumburg, Illinois (G.S.B.).
    • Anesthesiology. 2019 Dec 1; 131 (6): 1210-1222.

    AbstractIn late 1846, following his successful public demonstrations of surgical anesthesia, Boston dentist William T. G. Morton selected Letheon as the commercial name for the ether-based "preparation" he had used to produce insensibility to pain. We have not identified a first-hand account of the coinage of Letheon. Although the name ultimately derives from the Greek Lēthē, the adjective Lethean, much in use in the mid-19th century, may have influenced Morton and those he called on to assist in finding a commercial name. By one unverified account, the name Letheon might have been coined independently by both Augustus Addison Gould, M.D., and Henry Jacob Bigelow, M.D.

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