Ms. Fenster discusses her account of the invention and first use of surgical anesthesia, Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It, published by Harper Collins. Ms. Fenster’s book examines the development of painless surgery, as first practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846, now known in medical circles as Ether Day. According to the author, before the introduction of anesthesia, surgery was constrained by the intolerable pain it produced. The use of ether as an anesthetic originated from three men whose lives were ultimately destroyed by the discovery. They were Horace Wells, a dentist who experimented with nitrous oxide in his practice; William Morton, who learned the concept of painless dentistry from Wells; and Charles Jackson, a Harvard-educated physician who shared his knowledge of ether with Morton. The author’s presentation is followed by a question period.