William T.G. Morton successfully administers ether to a patient.

Morton employs the anesthetic while extracting a tooth from Boston merchant Eben Frost in his dental office near today’s 2 Center Plaza (then 19 Tremont Row). It is the first successful use of ether in Boston (Morton had studied with Hartford dentist Horace Wells, who had successfully used ether on December 11, 1844, but whose subsequent unsuccessful attempt at Massachusetts General Hospital had been met with cries of “Humbug”). Morton successfully uses ether at MGH a few weeks later.*