Crawford Long. Illustration of Crawford Williamson Long (1815-78), American surgeon and pioneer of the use of ether as an anaesthetic. Long, whilst taking part in fashionable 'ether frolics', noticed that his giggling companions did not notice pain when they fell over. He decided to use this effect of ether medicinally. On March 30, 1842, Long anaesthetised a boy called James Venable before removing cysts from his neck. Long did not publish his results, though, until 1849. In 1846 William Morton independently published his own work on the medicinal use of ether and was widely awarded the credit of discovering anaesthesia.