Comparative views of Dr. Daniel Denison Slade: R.) Frontispiece to Charles R. Eastman's biography of Dr. Slade. S.) Figure 10 detail from EDD No. 1, age 23-24; what looks like a cleft in the chin is a stylus or probe. T.) Detail pulled from the internet.
The identity of Figure 10 in Ether Dome Daguerreotype No. 1 is unknown to scholars. Wolfe identified Cabot, presumably Samuel Cabot (1815-1885), but doesn't say how he arrived at that conclusion.(51) Cabot was the medical officer for the second John Lloyd Stephens expedition to Yucatan and became the group's photographer after receiving instruction from the artist Frederick Catherwood, who preferred the camera lucida. But Cabot is not in the "Reenactment" daguerreotype nor is he represented in any of the other Ether Dome daguerreotypes.
There can be no doubt that Figure 10 is Dr. Daniel Denison Slade, appointed one of the two resident House-pupils that year. Distinguishing featural landmarks demonstrated by the panel shown here include a classic dolichocephalic head, narrow face, narrow dorsum nasi, prominent nasolabial and distinguishing naso-jugal groove, less developed cheek bones, prominent brow-line, sharp chin, deep set eyes, protruding ears, wavy hair. Arguably, with Slade in the frame, the reenactment scenario is again busted, because Slade's first exposure to etherization occurred on November 7, 1846, three weeks after the Abbott surgery when Harvard Medical School was again in session. On that day he was one of the medical students sitting in the bleachers to witness Dr. Hayward's amputation of the leg of 19-yr-old Alice Mohan, the third historic ether operation at Mass. General and the one that dispelled all doubts about ether anesthesia. Slade's dramatic memoir of that experience, published in Scribner's Monthly in 1892, is well known to historians. (52 »») Slade graduated M. D. in 1848 and was appointed House-surgeon on August 16 that year.
The presence of Daniel Denison Slade in the frame attests to his closeness with the Parkman family. He was especially close to Samuel's cousin Francis Parkman (1823-1893), whose chronicles of the Oregon Trail and the western wilderness are monuments in the classical repertoire of American history. D. D. Slade and Francis Parkman were inseparable during their college years at Harvard and between sessions as a pair of amateur frontiersmen exploring the pockets of wilderness that remained in New England. Their friendship was lifelong and devoted, lasting until Parkman's death and funeral, which Slade attended as one of the pall bearers.
51.) Wolfe, RJ (2001); Figure 12, page 78.
52.) Slade, DD (1892): Historic moments: The first capital operation under the influence of ether. In: Scribner's Monthly. New York: Scribner's; vol. 12 (October), p. 518-24.
