U.S. Patent No. 4848, issued to Charles T. Jackson and William T. G. Morton on November 12, 1846 for the discovery of sulfuric ether as a surgical anesthetic. This was the first truly significant medical patent ever issued. Few copies of this broadside were printed. Though the patent was formally issued on November 12, 1846 it is likely that the patent was first printed (as a broadside) in 1847.

Critics of Jackson's role in the discovery should remember that he shared the patent for the discovery with Morton, as Jackson discovered the scientific effects of ether in surgery while Morton deserves credit for introducing them to the surgical community. However, the patent proved unenforceable and the famous long-running dispute between Morton and Jackson over priority in the discovery ensued.

"Be it known that we, Charles T. Jackson and William T. G. Morton of Boston, in the County of Suffolk, and State of Massachusetts, have invented or discovered a new and useful improvement in surgical operations on animals, whereby we are enabled to accomplish many, if not all operations . . . without any, or with very little pain....

"It has never (to our knowledge) been known until our discovery, that the inhalation of [chemical ethers] (particularly those of sulphuric ether) would produce insensibility to pain, or such a state of quiet of nervous action as to render a person or animal incapable to a great extent, if not entirely, of experiencing pain while under the action of the knife or other instrument of operation of a surgeon, calculated to produce pain.

"This is our discovery, and the combining it with, or applying it to any operation of Surgery, for the purpose of alleviating animal suffering, as well as of enabling a surgeon to conduct his operations with little or no struggling, or muscular action of the patient, and with more certainty of success, constitutes our invention...."