Without explaining what it is, maybe you could just look around the room and describe what it looks like.

I am sitting in the top row of an amphitheater, almost like you would see in a theater you'd go to for a musical or

something like that, but very, very steeply banked seats.

They're about 100 seats.

And they are all overlooking what is now just a plain wooden floor.

And above that floor is this beautiful dome painted in an egg shell blue.

Today, that theater is largely empty. Sometimes filled with the occasional visitor or two, maybe a school group.

But 200 years ago, this theater would have been quite the scene.

And not a musical either.

Rather, a live surgery.

John Collins-Woren, the master surgeon, would have stood in the center of the room, set to perform.

Students would fill the seats watching down, and there he would be waiting for his starring patient to be carried to center stage, where a bright red surgical chair awaited

them. The audience, filled with medical students and fellow surgeons, is waiting for the show to begin.

I can only imagine how intense it was.

I should say that because surgery was often of last resort and obviously was very painful,

Warren would give his patients one last chance to get out of it. And so he did have some patients who said,

never mind, and he had patients who would go through with it.

One of the reasons why the architect supposedly put the dome up on the top floor of this building was because

it was thought that the cries of patients undergoing surgery would be less audible to the patients

and the staff in the rest of the building.

But one day, the screaming stopped, and not just because people were dead.

That day was October 16, 1846, a day that is now known as Ether Day.

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