March 30

Joseph M. Venable had a rather unsightly tumor on his neck that he wanted to have removed (The tumor, not the neck). Not being a surgeon himself, much less a doctor, Venable contacted Dr. Crawford Long (pictured), who was both a doctor and a surgeon. Morton, being an accommodating doctor, agreed to comply with Venable’s wishes and did remove the offending tumor making use of a really, really neat new trick: anesthesia, making him the first surgeon to make use of anesthesia during a surgery, and not just at parties. The surgery took place on the 30th in 1842.