Anasthesia-Word History

The following passage, written on November 21, 1846, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a physician-poet and the father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name, allows us to pinpoint the entry of anesthesia and anesthetic into English:

"Every body wants to have a hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to give you a hint or two as to names or the name to be applied to the state produced and the agent. The state should, I think, be called 'Anaesthesia' [from the Greek word anaisthsia, "lack of sensation"]. This signifies insensibility.... The adjective will be 'Anaesthetic.' Thus we might say the state of Anaesthesia, or the anaesthetic state." This citation is taken from a letter to William Thomas Green Morton