author
John Collins Warren
1778–1856
A pioneering Boston surgeon, he stood at the center of one of medicine’s great turning points: the first public operation performed with ether anesthesia. He also helped shape American medical education and publishing in the early 1800s.
2 Audiobooks
Remarks on some fossil impressions in the sandstone rocks of Connecticut River
by John Collins Warren
Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart
by John Collins Warren
About the author
Born in Boston on August 1, 1778, John Collins Warren became one of the leading American surgeons of his era. He studied at Harvard, trained further in London and Paris, and went on to build a major career in surgery and anatomy at Harvard Medical School.
Warren is especially remembered for his role in the famous 1846 operation at Massachusetts General Hospital, when ether was publicly demonstrated as a surgical anesthetic while he performed the procedure. That event helped change surgery around the world by showing that operations could be done with far less pain.
His influence reached far beyond the operating room. He was a founder of the publication that developed into The New England Journal of Medicine, a founding member of Massachusetts General Hospital, and later served as the third president of the American Medical Association. He died in Boston on May 4, 1856.