Today in Technology History

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January 21

Today, we begin the life story of Horace Wells, a pioneer in the use of anesthesia.

Wells was born on January 21, 1815 in Vermont. His parents sent him to various church-run schools in New England, and at the age of nineteen he went to Boston to learn dentistry as a sort of apprentice to practicing dentists. After a couple of years, he set up his own practice in Connecticut, and he soon wrote a 36-page booklet called "An Essay on Teeth, Comprising a Brief Description of Their Formation, Disease, and Proper Treatment," published in 1838.

In this painting, Wells is the patient having his tooth removed after inhaling nitrous oxide.

In about the year 1840, Wells first became interested in the gas nitrous oxide. Back in the late 1790s, the English chemist Humphry Davy had shown that inhaling nitrous oxide produced feelings of euphoric lightheadedness. Although Davy held hopes that the gas might be used in medicine, for the next several decades nitrous oxide was really only used as a drug at "laughing gas" parties.

It's not clear how familiar Wells was with these loopy drug parties, but in late 1844 he witnessed a demonstration of the numbing effects of nitrous oxide at a lecture. The intrigued dentist invited the lecturer to his office the very next day for the purpose of administering the laughing gas to Wells while a colleague removed one of his teeth.

Wells felt no pain during the procedure, and he immediately started using the gas on his patients with great success. Excited by his discovery, he arranged to perform a public demonstration -- a tooth extraction with the aid of nitrous oxide -- in early 1845 before an audience of medical students and doctors in Boston. Unfortunately, Wells apparently began to remove the patient's tooth without having applied enough nitrous oxide. The patient winced and cried out audibly, the students laughed, and Wells went home disgraced and discouraged.

We'll tell the rest of the story of Horace Wells later this week.

 

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