Ohio is an imaginary place that our parents made up to get us to behave.

Have you ever met anyone from Wyoming though?

Hmm... where else have I heard of a simple, effective medical advance able to save millions of lives and reduce the suffering of tens of millions more being developed largely in the Greater Boston Area?

And then getting rejected by some portions of the rest of the country bc they don't like the "elites" in their "hub of the universe"...

It’s not as bad as Semmelweis, who is one of the more fucked up stories in medicine. Guy basically proves via clinical experiments that sanitization of doctors hands reduces patient mortality. Instead of other doctors being convinced by his evidence, they get him fired, ostracized, he’s forced to move, eventually admitted to an asylum, and dies presumably from complications after being by guards. It would take many more decades before the medical community would begin to adopt antiseptic techniques.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Even more than a century later, many doctors would be doing autopsies without gloves on too. I worked with pathologists (in their 60s now) who were doing that in their residencies because it was the norm and got medical issues from doing so.

People (including doctors) are surprisingly stupid sometimes.

A Boston "dentist" looking to get rich first demonstrated its use at MGH, mostly because other doctors were afraid of what would happen to their career if they promoted something exposed as "humbug." He then attempted to patent it by pretending it was a more complicated formula than simply diethyl ether (which failed as people could easily recognize the smell).

I had a minor surgery a few months ago, and was nonetheless very thankful to the flawed men that were Charles Jackson and William Morton, which ever truly realized the potential of ether. I make sure to stop at both of their graves whenever I find myself walking at Mt. Auburn.

The operating theater in which ether was first used has been preserved and remains as a museum of sorts with Massachusetts General Hospital.

There’ve been rumors, but evidence is sketchy

Its out past 495, or so the weather man says

Yea, its called West USA and South USA

Perhaps the most New England thing ever written

Should be our actual state motto.

It's a really easy decision to stay here when the rest of the country is so god damned intent on making itself as shitty as possible.

Julia Fenster's Ether Day about the first use of surgical anesthesia. It's an amazing story, though tragic, as the discovery and fight for ownership basically ruined the lives of all involved. Also sad as the chemistry for sulfuric ether and nitrous oxide was there already from about 1800, but people just had accepted that surgery was a painful fact of life, and so many people had to go through horrific suffering when something that could've eliminated it was dismissed as a frivolity. Boston had the right convergence of factors that allowed for the first public use of ether, often attributed as America's first great medical discovery. And in a very American fashion, it took a lightly educated con-artist to break the paradigms held by the European oriented medical community and change medicine forever.

It feels like something out of hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, but I can't say for certain

This is actually really great to know! Will do!

All the way to New York

Biggest risk is definitely how flammable the stuff is. I remember reading an account from a WWII doctor, the bottom foot or so of atmosphere in a surgical tent at the front would ether vapor (heavier than air). If there was a spark, not to mention a shell, the whole thing would instantly go up.

>Boston is a fake port city

FTFY