William T. G. Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on 16 October 1846 during at operation by John Collins Warren to remove a benign angioma under the jaw of a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital. During the operation it was immediately recognized that inhalation of ether vapor produced complete anesthesia. Bigelow, a surgeon who witnessed the operation, left an excellent account in the above paper, which was read before the Boston Society of Medical Improvement on 9 November 1846, an abstract having been previously read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on 3 November. Bigelow's paper was first published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18, 1846. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Bigelow had offprints printed of this paper, presumably sometime after the original article appeared. The offprint version was printed from reset type and omitted the final seven paragraphs in which Bigelow referred to the patent for the use of ether in surgery that was shared by Morton and Charles Thomas Jackson. This had the effect of crediting Morton for the discovery while ignoring the key contributions to Charles T. Jackson, who shared credit with Morton on the patent. A digital facsimile of the offprint version is available from the Internet Archive at this link.