William Thomas Green Morton — American Inventor born on August 09, 1819, died on July 15, 1868

William Thomas Green Morton was an American dentist who first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic in 1846. The promotion of his questionable claim to have been the discoverer of anesthesia became an obsession for the rest of his life... (wikipedia)

The state should, I think, be called 'anesthesia.' This signifies insensibility.
That so unlikely an outcome should accrue to a man possessed of such limited talent and so many flaws, and one lacking in a sense of ethics and decency was one of the bitter ironies of history.