City Document. — No. 101. 
CITY OF BOSTON. 
PROCEEDINGS 
AT THE 
DEDICATION 
OF THE 
ETHER MONUMENT. 
1868. The following pages comprise a sketch of the origin of the 
monument in commemoration of the discovery of the anesthetic 
properties of ether, which structure was erected in the Public 
Garden by the munificence of the late Thomas Lee of Boston, 
and was dedicated with appropriate services on Saturday, June 
27, 1868. CITY OF BOSTON. 
In Board of Aldermen, June 29, 1868. 
Ordered, That an account of the ceremonies connected with 
the presentation to the City and the dedication of the Ether 
Monument upon the Public Garden, be printed for preservation 
with the City Documents. 
Passed; sent down for concurrence. 
G. W. MESSINGER, Chairman. 
In Common Council, July 2, 1868. 
Concurred. 
CHARLES H. ALLEN, President. 
Approved, July 3, 1868. 
NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, Mayor. 
A true copy. 
Attest: 
S. F. McCLEARY, City Clerk. CITY OF BOSTON. 
At a meeting of the Board of Aldermen, held March 19, 
1866, Hon. Frederic W. Lincoln, Jr., the Mayor, submitted to 
the Board the following message: 
GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN. 
I have the honor of laying before you a communication from 
Thomas Lee, Esquire, proposing, if acceptable to the city, to 
erect at his own expense a monument on the Public Garden in 
commemoration of the greatest medical discovery of our time, — 
the application of the properties of ether to the alleviation of 
pain and human suffering. Mr. Lee’s gift to the city of the 
statue of Hamilton, now standing on Commonwealth Avenue, 
has already received the acknowledgments of the government 
and the gratitude of our citizens. This renewed token of his 
interest in the embellishment of our public grounds, and the pe- 
culiar sentiments sought to be embodied in the proposed 
memorial, calls for a similar expression of our appreciation of 
his public spirit and liberality. There can be no doubt that the 
discovery and the first successful application of ether as an anaes- 
thetic was made in our own city; and thus Boston has acquired 
an historical renown on its account which renders it eminently 
proper that a monument to its honor should be erected within 
our municipal limits. The benefits of ether are for all mankind j 
it is used throughout the world, wherever scientific medical and 
surgical treatment is practised; and while its early history 
might seem to justify a certain degree of local pride, yet the 
monument in itself will be an expression of gratitude and 6 
City Document. — No. 101. 
thanksgiving. It is not an insignificant fact that the period of 
its erection occurs soon after a terrible war was brought to a 
close, the necessary miseries of which were considerably allevi- 
ated by the use of this agent. The design of the monument is 
appropriate. The base is composed of a series of fountains, 
supplying the pool with living water, reminding the spectator 
of the pool of Bethesda, where the sick waited to be cured of 
their diseases. The top is surmounted by the figure of the Good 
Samaritan, illustrating one of the most beautiful parables of our 
Saviour, and teaching a lesson we are so apt to forget in the 
bustle and turmoil of a great city, that we are all brothers, and 
that our nearest neighbor is he who most needs our mercy and 
charity. This proposition is another illustration of the en- 
lightened and disinterested spirit of many of our opulent citi- 
zens. It is seen in the liberal endowment of our literary and 
charitable institutions, and, in its most graceful form, exhibited 
in those works of art which adorn and embellish the city,— 
objects of pride to our own people and an attraction to the 
stranger. I trust that your Board will sanction the enterprise 
proposed by Mr. Lee, and grant the request. 
F. W. LINCOLN, Jr., Mayor. 
Boston, March 13, 1866. 
Hon. F. W. Lincoln, Jr., Mayor of the City of Boston: 
Sir, — I propose to erect and present to the city a monument in the form 
of a fountain, as an expression of gratitude for the relief of human suffering 
occasioned by the discovery of the anesthetic properties of sulphuric ether. 
As a site I respectfully suggest a position in the Public Garden opposite 
Marlborough Street, about one hundred feet from Arlington Street. I have 
intrusted the designing and superintendence of this monument to Messrs. 
Ware and Van Brunt, architects, of this city, to whom I refer you for all 
further information on the subject. I beg to be informed at the earliest 
moment, if this proposition is acceptable to the City Government, whether 
they will authorize the use of the site named, and will furnish the necessary 
connection with the water pipes and drains. 
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
THOMAS LEE. Ether Monument. 
7 
The foregoing communication having been read, was referred 
to the Committee on the Common and Public Squares. 
In Board of Aldermen, March 26, 1866. 
The Committee on Common and Public Squares, to whom 
was referred the communication of His Honor the Mayor 
relative to the proposal of Thomas Lee, Esquire, to present to 
the city a memorial fountain designed to commemorate the dis- 
covery of the anesthetic properties of ether, beg leave to report: 
That, in their opinion, this renewed instance of patriotic 
munificence on the part of Mr. Lee merits the grateful acknowl- 
edgment of the City Government, and that His Honor the 
Mayor be requested to communicate the same to that gentleman, 
in such terms as he may deem appropriate; that the position for 
the proposed structure, on the Public Garden, opposite Marl- 
borough Street, suggested by the donor, is approved by the 
Committee; that in view of the ample supply of water to be 
secured by the new reservoir now building, the quantity required 
to give full effect to the proposed fountain may be furnished 
without detriment to the citizens, and that the Water Board 
should be directed to furnish the same. 
Per order of the Committee. 
JOHN S. TYLER, Chairman. 
The Committee submit the following orders: 
Ordered, That so much of the Public Garden as may be re- 
quired as a site for the Memorial Fountain presented to the city 
by Thomas Lee, Esquire, be set apart for that purpose. 
Ordered, That whenever the Memorial Fountain presented by 
Thomas Lee, Esquire, to the city, shall be completed and erected, 
the Water Board shall cause the same to be supplied constantly 
with as much water as may be necessary to give the fountain its 
proper effect. 
Read twice and passed. 
Approved by the Mayor, March 27, 1866. 8 
City Document. — No. 101. 
The site for the monument having been selected, work was at 
once commenced thereon, and, the monument having been en- 
tirely completed, it was surrendered to the care of the municipal 
government of Boston on Saturday, June 27,1868, by the follow- 
ing simple ceremonies. The venerable Thomas Lee having .died 
before the completion of the monument, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, 
surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where the first 
capital operations were performed with the aid of sulphuric 
ether, was selected by the friends of Mr. Lee to deliver the 
address of dedication. 
The address was pronounced in the Public Garden by Dr. 
Bigelow, who delivered the monument to Hon. Nathaniel B. 
Shurtleff, Mayor of the City, in the following words:— 
Mr. Mayor, — It was the wish of the late venerable gentle- 
man who caused this monument to be erected, to rear an endur- 
ing memorial of the discovery in Boston, from which dates the 
era of painless surgery; and also that on some fitting occasion 
it should be offered for the acceptance of his fellow-citizens. 
In no act of a long life, characterized by many deeds of lib- 
erality, by the exercise of a refined and cultivated taste for 
nature and for art, and by a discriminating judgment of men 
and of passing events, did he show greater discernment than 
when he organized this work; and although he did not live to 
see it executed, he had so far supervised its plans, and so in- 
trusted them to skilful hands that no difficulty was met with in 
completing its beautiful design in detailed conformity to his 
wishes. 
This monument is intended, in the words of the tablet, which 
were written since his death, “ To commemorate the discovery 
that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility of pain; first 
proved to the world at the Massachusetts General Hospital, in 
Boston, October, A. D. 1846,’' by its appliance during a pro- 
tracted dissection, which, when followed by one of the severest Ether Monument, 
9 
operations known to surgery, was a final and conclusive test in 
a close and connected series of successful experiments, which 
proved that pain could be annulled; first, with certainty, no 
matter who the individual; secondly, with completeness, no 
matter how great might be its degree; and thirdly, with safety. 
These three points were all absolutely involved in the discovery, 
and these alone. Before the consecutive experiments which 
culminated in those here recorded, neither of these points had 
been established by conclusive proof. The world was ignorant 
of the great truths they asserted, the discovery had not been 
made. 
The philanthropist had indeed yearned to relieve suffering hu- 
manity ; the poet had prophetically announced a world freed from 
physical pain; the philosopher had made fruitless efforts to unveil 
the hidden secret. Instances of accidental insensibility had 
been observed. Here and there an ingenious man had devised 
and tried some single experiment with greater or less success, 
and then abandoned the pursuit; or tantalized by a possibility, 
at one moment in his grasp, and in the next eluding it, stimulated 
by a flattering promise of achieving something at once practical 
and useful, had followed up his experiments hopefully, until some 
great public failure disheartened him, made his proselytes 
incredulous, and left the world still to suffer pain. 
Men had been made insensible to pain through mental excite- 
ment, or by the agency of mesmerism or hypnotism, by the dead 
drunkenness of alcohol, the narcotism of opium, the inhalation 
of nitrous oxide and other gases, and even by the vapor of 
ether. For years all this had been known to be possible, but 
it attracted little attention. These previous experiments insti- 
tuted by different persons were inconclusive because they led to 
no constant result; the anaesthesia could not be relied on, or it 
was not demonstrated that it could be relied on, either as sure 
to occur or as proof against the severer forms of pain. The 
question of danger from this extraordinary trance was also 10 
City Document.—No. 101. 
unsettled. No consulting board of surgeons would have dared 
to sanction the production of prolonged unconsciousness during 
an operation, before the series of consecutive experiments were 
made here in Tremont Street and at the hospital. There had 
been a lack of perseverance or of good fortune in the experiment- 
ers, or an imperfection in their materials or method, and the 
future discovery which was soon to burst upon the world halted 
for an interval of years at this imperfect stage. The whole 
progress of all invention and discovery has been a monotonous 
catalogue of such imperfect efforts and such failures. But when 
these consecutive experiments had been made in Boston, the 
discovery had been made; and in grateful and unhesitating 
recognition of it, the entire civilized world simultaneously rose 
up to hail it with acclamatory welcome. 
Thus was made the discovery, and thus was begun the career 
of anaesthetic inhalation. Modifications, imitations and substi- 
tutes have sprung up in all civilized countries. New processes 
and new materials will yet be furnished by science, or demanded 
by convenience or economy, but after more than twenty years 
of its successful trial, nothing has been found to surpass, in its 
efficiency or unqualified safety, the original ether then used. 
To commemorate the triple and demonstrated discovery, not 
of a probable, an uncertain or untrustworthy, but of an inevi- 
table, complete and safe anaesthesia, this monument has been 
erected in a city which was the humble instrument of Divine 
Providence in diffusing to the nations this incalculable blessing. 
I well remember when the eloquent and gifted man whose 
brazen effigy on yonder pedestal so powerfully recalls his living 
presence, in an address delivered at the Medical College on the 
4tli of November, 1846, said, with an unconscious foreshadow- 
ing of what was soon to happen, “ I cannot suppress the remark 
that the great principle of analogy seems to authorize the hope 
that . . . further discoveries may be expected scarcely less 
brilliant than that of vaccination.” How far even this prophetic Ether Monument. 
11 
inspiration fell sliort of the reality! How little did he dream 
that the lapse of a few brief days would herald to the earth the 
greatest boon ever accorded to the physical welfare of man- 
kind; days of discovery that forever silenced the dreadful 
shriek of agony which many of us can yet recall in the surgical 
amphitheatre of the institution whose name is now immortal- 
ized, that stilled the moan of the soldier stricken down upon 
the battlefield, assuaged the pangs of disease, softened the 
approach of death, and lent a sweet obliviousness in what was 
once its hour of anguish to all animal existence, from the poor 
suffering brute up to humanity, to man born of woman and to 
woman of whom man is born. 
In the name and at the request of my venerable friend, the 
late Mr. Thomas Lee, of his executors, and of the gentlemen to 
whom he intrusted the arrangement of this ceremony, I offer 
this memorial to you, sir, and through you to the City of Boston. 
At the conclusion of the remarks, of Dr. Bigelow, Mayor 
Shurtleff responded as follows : — 
In behalf of the municipal authorities of Boston, I now form- 
ally receive from you the gift of Mr. Thomas Lee; and promise 
that it shall be watched with care and protected from injury. 
And may this elegant structure long remain unimpaired by time 
— a memorial of the greatest boon ever vouchsafed to suffering 
humanity, and a monument of the gratitude of one of Boston’s 
most worthy citizens. 
The exercises were closed with an appropriate prayer by 
Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop, D. D. 12 
City Document. — No. 101. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE MONUMENT. 
The monument was designed by Messrs. Ware & Van Brunt, 
architects, of this city. 
The form of the monument is suggested by mediaeval types, 
modified by the nature of the white Concord granite used in its 
construction. It is about thirty feet in height and arises from a 
square basin. Its base is cubical, leaving on each vertical face 
a niche containing a spouting lion’s head, with sculptured water 
lilies and other aquatic plants. Upon this base or plinth, rests 
a sur-base adorned with mouldings, from which arises a die, 
bearing upon each of its four sides an inscription, surmounted 
by a bass-relief in marble. These are sunk in the tympana of 
four pointed and cuspidated arches, supported each by two 
stunted shafts of red Gloucester granite, the capitals of which 
are enriched by poppies and oak leaves, this decoration being 
carried around the monument on the same level in a band or 
string course. 
These arches form a canopy, square in plan, from which the 
structure diminishes by a series of mouldings to the base of a 
grouped quadripartite shaft of polished red granite. Its capital, 
which is decorated with oak leaves, bears on its abacus a group 
setting forth the story of “ the good Samaritan,” the type of the 
relief of suffering. 
The inscriptions and bass-reliefs on the four sides are succes- 
sively as follows: — 
I. 
To commemorate 
the discovery 
that the inhalation of ether 
causes insensibility to pain. 
First proved to the world 
at the Mass. General Hospital 
in Boston, 
October, A. D. MDCCCXLYI. Ether Monument, 
13 
The bass-relief accompanying this represents a surgical opera- 
tion in a civic hospital, the patient being under the influence of 
ether. 
II. 
Neither shall there be any more pain. 
[Revelation. 
With an allegorical bass-relief of the angel of mercy descend- 
ing to relieve suffering humanity. 
III. 
In gratitude 
for the relief 
of human suffering 
by the inhaling of ether, 
a citizen of Boston 
has erected 
this monument. 
A. D. MDCCCLXYII. 
With a bass-relief of a field hospital, with a wounded soldier 
in the hands of the surgeons. 
IV. 
This also cometh forth 
from the Lord of Hosts, 
which is wonderful 
in counsel 
and excellent 
in working. 
[Isaiah. 
The bass-relief accompanying this inscription is an allegory of 
the triumph of science. 14 
City Document. — No. 101. 
The model for the crowning group is from the studio of Mr. 
J. Q. A. Ward, sculptor, of New York. It is executed in 
granite by Mr. Garrett Barry of Quincy. The four marble bas- 
reliefs are also the work of Mr. Ward. Mr. Thomas Hollis of 
Milton was the contractor for the granite work, which was exe- 
cuted at the yard of Mr. D. C. Hutchinson of this city. The 
masonry is by Mr. Martin L. Whitcher. 
By a vote of the City Council, passed July 3, 1868, the in- 
scription “The Gift of Thomas Lee,” was placed on the 
bases of the Ether Monument and of the Hamilton Statue.