Horace Wells

Horace Wells (January 21, 1815 – January 24, 1848) was an American dentist who pioneered the use of anesthesia in dentistry, specifically nitrous oxide (or laughing gas).

Born in Hartford, Vermont, Wells was educated in Walpole, New Hampshire before studying dentistry in Boston. After obtaining a degree, Wells set up a practice in Hartford, Connecticut, with an associate named William T. G. Morton, who would become famous for his use of ether as an anesthetic on October 16, 1846.

Wells first bore witness to the effects of nitrous oxide in 1844 when he volunteered to have it demonstrated on him by Gardner Quincy Colton, a member of a traveling circus. Wells felt nothing, and was the first patient to be operated on under anesthesia, having his tooth extracted later that year by his associate, John Riggs. He then began utilising it on his own patients. He did not attempt to patent the discovery because he stated that pain relief should be 'as free as the air'.

He gave a demonstration to medical students at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1845. However, the gas was improperly administered and the patient cried out in pain. The audience of students in the surgical theatre jeered "humbug". [Some time later, when ether was first successfully demonstrated for surgical anesthesia, in that same operating theatre, the respected surgeon, who was present for Wells's demonstration, declared "gentlemen, this is no humbug". Because of this embarrassment, Wells was discredited in the medical community. Later, however, Wells successfully had one of his own teeth removed while using inhalant anesthesia, proving its uses.]

After this disgrace, Wells gave up dentistry and became a travelling salesman for the next two years, wandering Connecticut and selling canaries, shower baths and other household items. In 1847, he left for Paris after being given a demonstration on anesthesia by his prosperous former partner William Morton.

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