This is an "Ether" Day painting by Hinckley which commemorates the first demonstration of ether anesthesia in the Etherdome of the Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16th, 1846. The patient, Gilbert Abbott, has a tumor on his neck and reclines on a chair in the center of the painting. W.T.G. Morton, a dentist who would give the anesthetic, holds the glass ether vaporizer and the surgeon, Professor John Warren, stands above the patient. When the surgery was completed Professor Warren turned to the gallery and, with tears in his eyes, said "Gentleman this is no humbug." On that day the infant specialty of anesthesia was born. The first ether anesthetic had actually been given on March 30th, 1942 by Dr. Crawford Long a General Practitioner from Jefferson Jackson County, Georgia but for an unexplained reason he did not record it.