First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia
Surgery without pain — modern operating begins
On 16 October 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital, dentist William Morton put a patient under with ether while a surgeon removed a tumour painlessly. Anaesthesia spread worldwide within months and made modern surgery possible.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — 7 years earlier
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 1 year earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 2 years later
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 2 years later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 15 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 7 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 15 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 21 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 23 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 18 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 7 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 7 years earlier
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 11 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 1 year later
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 23 years later
Asia
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 15 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 7 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 7 years later
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 22 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 5 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 37)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 37)
- Karl Marx (aged 28)
- Queen Victoria (aged 27)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 25)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 18)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 12)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 6)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 86)
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt (aged 77)