Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818-1890), US surgeon. Bigelow studied at Harvard College and Dartmouth College. He was Surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital for 40 years from 1846. He played a key role in promoting the use of ether in anaesthesia in an 1846 article in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. From 1849 to 1882, he was Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. The Bigelow Operating Theater in the new Massachusetts General Hospital (opened 1887) was named in his honour, and a bust of him was placed there in 1896. Bigelow was among those who studied the famous case of Phineas Gage and his brain injury.