Before 1842, surgery was a nightmare. Patients were fully awake and could feel everything. Doctors had to work as fast as possible. Then a young doctor in a small Georgia town changed medicine forever. Dr. Crawford Long noticed something interesting at parties. People sometimes inhaled a gas called ether for fun. When they did, they would stumble and fall but feel no pain. Long wondered: if ether stopped pain at a party, could it stop pain during surgery? On March 30, 1842, he tested his idea. A man named James Venable needed a small growth removed from his neck. Long held a cloth soaked in ether over Venable's face. Within minutes, Venable was asleep. Long performed the procedure successfully. When Venable woke up, he felt nothing. This was the birth of anesthesia, the science of blocking pain during medical work. Strangely, Long did not tell many people about his discovery. Years later, another doctor named William Morton gave a famous public demonstration of ether in Boston. Morton got most of the credit at first, but history recognized that Crawford Long had done it first.