Crawford (Williamson) Long

Surgeon and anaesthetist, born in Danielsville, Georgia, USA. Practising in rural Georgia, he was the first doctor to use sulphuric ether as an anesthetic in an operation (1842), when he was removing a tumour from a patient's neck. Although he operated several more times with ether before 1846, he was apparently unaware of its full significance, and did not publish a description of his procedure until 1849. By that time, W T G Morton of Boston had filed a patent for discovery of ether in 1846, and Long would never get much credit or gain from claim to priority.

Crawford Williamson Long (November 1, 1815 – June 16, 1878) was an American physician and pharmacist. Long is now known to be the first to have used an ether-based anesthesia.

After observing the same effects with ether that were already described by Humphry Davy in 1800 with nitrous oxide, C.W. Long used ether the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of his patient, Mr. James M. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from Venable and used ether anesthesia in amputations and childbirth.

He was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society while a student at the University of Georgia and shared a room with Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.

Long County, Georgia and Emory University's Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia are named in his honor. Long Museum in downtown Jefferson, Georgia, has been in operation since 1957.