The New International Encyclopædia/Jackson, Charles Thomas

JACKSON, Charles Thomas (1805-80). An American scientist, born at Plymouth, Mass. He graduated at the Harvard Medical School in 1829, and took time during the last two years of his course to make a mineralogical and geological survey of Nova Scotia in company with Francis Alger of Boston. An account of this expedition is contained in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He went to Europe in 1829, and spent three years studying in Paris, varied by occasional trips to Germany and Italy. In 1833 he began the practice of medicine in Boston, but soon abandoned it to devote himself to chemistry, mineralogy, and geology. He was State geologist of Maine in 1836, of Rhode Island in 1839, and of New Hampshire in 1840. In 1837 he had a violent controversy with Morse, to whom he claimed to have given the idea of the telegraph. He explored the wilderness on the southern shore of Lake Superior in 1844, and from 1847 till 1849 was United States surveyor of mineral lands in Michigan. He claimed to be the discoverer of the anæsthetic properties of ether, and this involved him in a dispute with Dr. W. T. G. Morton. His claim was supported by many Boston physicians, and a committee appointed by the French Academy of Sciences to investigate the matter decided that both men were entitled to recognition. Dr. Jackson published elaborate reports of his work as a State geologist, and as a member of the United States Geological Survey; contributed articles to the American Journal of Science and Arts, to the Comptes Rendus, and to the Bulletin de la Société Géologicale de France; and wrote a Manual of Etherization, with a History of Its Discovery (1863).