was involved not once but twice in the earliest history of anesthesia. The first incident was a failed demonstration of nitrous-oxide by dentist Horace Wells on January 20, 1845. Although Warren did not believe that the anesthesia would work, he arranged for a demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital. Warren presented Wells to his students but the patient who had been scheduled that morning, for an amputation, refused to be operated on. Warren then asked his students if anybody needed a tooth extracted and one student agreed. Unfortunately the gas was not properly administered. The student suffered normal levels of pain, thus discrediting Wells and nitrous-oxide as an anesthetic. Not willing to accept that failure, on October 16, 1846, Warren again agreed to perform a public demonstration of a surgical operation, with anesthesia, on a patient, this time under ether anesthesia administered by Wells' colleague and competitor, William T.G. Morton. Warren was, at this time, 68 years of age. The operation lasted about ten minutes and the patient was seemingly unconscious for its duration. After Warren had finished, and the patient had regained consciousness, Warren asked the patient how he felt. Reportedly, the patient answered: "Feels as if my neck's been scratched". Warren then stated to his audience "Gentlemen, this is no Humbug," although this proclamation is disputed. His personal journal for this day records, "Did an interesting operation at the Hospital this morning, while the patient was under the influence of Dr. Morton's preparation to prevent pain. The substance employed was sulphuric ether." Warren was quick to see the remarkable advantages offered by ether in surgical procedures, and he then championed the cause of etherization through his work and publications. Mindful of the potential importance of the demonstration, Warren invited noted photographers Southworth & Hawes to document the surgery via a re-enactment. In subsequent months, they made a series of daguerrotypes of actual operations. Death Warren died from pericarditis on May 4, 1856, at his home at Park 2 street in Boston. It was believed for over 100 years that his remains laid in his memorial tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, MA but in fact his remains are divided; his skeleton is in a coffin-like box at Harvard's Warren Museum, since he donated his body to Harvard Medical School for research, and his so-called "morbid parts" [i.e. flesh] only were interred in the tomb. Personal life Warren