"The personal side--heroic, comic, and tragic--of the early history of anesthesia has never been more vividly re-created than in Julie Fenster's well-researched and crisply written book."
-- Roy Porter, author of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind

"Too often historians take medicine for granted, writing books instead on death marches, gruesome blagues, and ungodly epidemics. So it comes as a welcome surprise to read Julie Fenster's marvelous Ether Day, a riveting saga about the discovery of anesthesia by a bizarre trio of unlikely heroes. This is nonfiction storytelling at its absolue finest."
-- Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at the Univ of New Orleans

"In Julie Fenster, what may well be the single most important event in the nineteenth century has found a teller worthy of the tale. Ether Day is a fascinating chronicle of jealousy, greed, chicanery, and outright fraud, sometimes darkly funny, sometimes appalling. Throughout, the author traces the course of a complex and absorbing epic with verve, clarity, and grace."
-- Richard Snow, editor of American Heritage

"The cast of characters here is a rich one. . . . A thoroughly compelling account, well told and well situated in its larger context."
-- Kirkus Reviews