William T. G. Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on 16 October 1846 during at operation by John Collins Warren to remove a benign angioma under the jaw of a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital. During the operation it was immediately recognized that inhalation of ether vapor produced complete anesthesia. Bigelow, a surgeon who witnessed the operation, left an excellent account in the above paper, which was read before the Boston Society of Medical Improvement on 9 November 1846, an abstract having been previously read before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on 3 November. Bigelow's paper was first published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18, 1846. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Bigelow had offprints printed of this paper, presumably sometime after the original article appeared. The offprint version was printed from reset type and omitted the final seven paragraphs in which Bigelow referred to the patent for the use of ether in surgery that was shared by Morton and Charles Thomas Jackson. This had the effect of crediting Morton for the discovery while ignoring the key contributions to Charles T. Jackson, who shared credit with Morton on the patent. A digital facsimile of the offprint version is available from the Internet Archive at this link.

The first publication in England of the discovery of ether anesthesia appeared in the "Medical Intelligence" section of the London Medical Gazette on December 18, 1846. Prior to Fulton & Stanton's discovery of this article it was long assumed that the earliest publication in England was published ten days later, on the last page of The Lancet for Saturday, December 28, 1846. The text of the "Medical Intelligence" entry in the London Medical Gazette is much more substantial than the brief notice in The Lancet. The editor of the London Medical Gazette wrote, "We learn on the authority of a highly respectable physician of Boston, U.S.,[Henry Jacob Bigelow] that a Dr. Morton, a surgeon-dentist of that city, has discovered a process whereby in a few minutes the most profound sleep may be induced, during which teeth may be extracted, and severe operations performed, without the patient being sensible of pain, or having any knowledge of the proceedings of the operator. The process simply consists in causing the patient to inhale the vapour of ether for as short period, and the effect is to produce complete insensibility." See John F. Fulton, "The reception in England of Henry Jacob Bigelow's original paper on anesthesia," New Eng. J. Med., 235 (1946) 745-746.

Bigelow’s speedy publication of Morton’s discovery (No. 5651), and his subsequent advocacy of ether as an anesthetic assured its adoption throughout the civilized world. The above work deals with the priority claims of Morton and Charles Thomas Jackson, with Bigelow taking Morton's side in the dispute. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

First excision of the hip-joint in America. Unfortunately the one-page article provides no details.

Bigelow was the first to describe in detail the mechanism of the iliofemoral (Bigelow’s) ligament, and to show its importance in the reduction of dislocation by the flexion method.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Introduction of litholapaxy at one sitting.