Collins Warren, senior surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital, removed a tumor from his neck. Although it is believed that ether anesthesia had been administered for surgery earlier, most notably by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson Georgia on March 30, 1843, it had been done privately and not reported in the medical literature. Morton's public demonstration of general anesthesia was therefore historic. To commemorate this momentous event, Southworth & Hawes were asked to daguerreotype the operation; however Hawes was squeamish about the blood, and they photographed a re-enactment instead. On April 3, 1847, Southworth & Hawes were called upon to record an actual operation, again with the patient under ether. Later Dr. Warren presented his Laundy scalpel and probe, the surgical instruments he used in the first operation, to Hawes in gratitude for recording the operations. (Three or four weeks later, they documented Dr. Warren yet again. In honor of his ether discovery, and of his distinguished career as professor of anatomy at Harvard Medical School, they arranged and composed a mock anatomy dissection, with the principal subject being Dr. Warren himself.) Dispersion of the archives Hawes lived until 1901, continuing to operate a studio and carefully protecting its sizeable archive. The archives were finally dispersed during the Great Depression. Most made their way into three museums (George Eastman House, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), while only a comparatively few have ever been privately held. However, on April 27, 1999, a previously unknown hoard of 240 Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes appeared at Sotheby's auction from the estate of David Feigenbaum. The total sales price realized was $3.3 million. Image gallery Portrait subjects Alvin Adams Brooks Adams John Quincy Adams Marietta Alboni Stephen Allen Susan B. Anthony Nathan Appleton William Appleton D.C. Bacon Ellen B. Bacon Nathan Prentiss Banks Gaetano Bedini Henry Ward Beecher Lyman Beecher Elise Biscaccianti George Sewall Boutwell Henry I. Bowdich Laura Dewey Bridgman George Nixon Briggs Louise Winsor Brooks Samuel Gilman Brown Elizabeth Dwight Cabot Edward Tyrrel Channing Seth Wells Cheney Jonas Chickering Francis James Child Thomas Childs James Freeman Clarke Cassius Marcellus Clay Henry Clay C.W. Couldock Henry Clifford Curtis Charlotte Cushman Henry Dexter Dorothea Dix John Dixwell Mrs. F.N. Drew Rufus Ellis Ralph Waldo Emerson Edward Everett Cornelia Conway Felton Annie Adams Fields James Thomas Fields Millard Fillmore John Fiske Benjamin F. French William Frick Margaret Fuller William Lloyd Garrison