The Nitrous Oxide Era
Although, as already stated, Humphry Davy had discovered the anæsthetic properties of nitrous oxide as far back as the year 1800, forty-four years elapsed before his idea was put into practical use.
Colton lectures on nitrous oxide
On December 11th, 1844, Dr. G. Q. Colton, a well-known lecturer on popular scientific subjects in America, and a pupil of Professor Turner, of London, delivered a lecture at Hartford, Connecticut, during which he gave a demonstration of the action of nitrous oxide gas. Horace Wells, a dentist, then in practice in the same town, formed one of the audience.
Horace Wells
Wells makes his historic experiment
Among the persons who were invited by the lecturer to inhale the gas for the amusement of the audience was a man named Cooley, who wounded himself severely by falling against the benches, and only became aware of the fact when he saw the blood. Wells was greatly struck by this incident, and he determined to test the anæsthetic effects of the gas upon himself the next day by having a decayed upper molar extracted while under its influence. After the lecture he asked Dr. Colton if he would come to his house and administer the gas to him; and, on receiving his promise, he induced a Dr. Riggs to be the operator.
“A new era in tooth-pulling”
The historic event is described by the latter as follows: “A few minutes after I went in, and, after conversation, Dr. Wells took a seat in the operating chair. I examined the tooth to be extracted, with a glass, as I usually do. Wells took a bag of gas from Dr. Colton and sat with it in his lap, and I stood by his side; he then breathed the gas until he was much affected by it: his head dropped back, I put my hand to his chin, he opened his mouth, and I extracted the tooth. His mouth still remained open some time. I held up the tooth with the instrument that the others might see it; they, standing partially behind the screen, were looking on. Dr. Wells soon recovered from the influence of the gas so as to know what he was about, discharged the blood from his mouth, and said, ‘A new era in tooth-pulling!’ He said it did not hurt him at all. We were all much elated, and conversed about it for an hour later.”
“A New Era in Tooth-Pulling”
The first dental operation performed on Horace Wells whilst under the influence of nitrous oxide gas
After this, Wells extracted several teeth from his patients under nitrous oxide gas with equal success, and then went to Boston in order to make his discovery known to the medical profession in that city. He remained there some days in the hope of being allowed to try the gas in a case of amputation in the Massachusetts General Hospital, but the experiment was postponed. Dr. Warren, senior surgeon to the institution, however, invited him to address his class on the subject of anæsthesia, after which he was asked to administer the gas in a case of tooth extraction. He was assisted on this occasion by Morton, a Boston dentist who had been his pupil, and afterwards, for a time, his partner. The experiment, as Wells himself confesses, was not quite a success, the gas-bag having been removed too soon. The whole thing was denounced as a piece of humbug, and Wells was hissed out of the room as an impostor.
Wells disheartened by failure
Disheartened at length by the failure of his repeated attempts to establish his claims to priority as the discoverer of anæsthesia, his mind appeared to become affected, and for a time he wandered about the streets of New York. On January 4th, 1848, he was arrested and charged with throwing vitriol, but while in gaol he opened his radial artery, having first inhaled ether to make death painless.The death of Horace Wells This sad event closed, at the age of thirty-two, the career of Horace Wells, to whom at least belongs the credit of having first shown the practicability of producing insensibility by nitrous oxide, and of having thus, in his own words, “established the principle of anæsthesia.”