Nitrous Oxide and Dental Anaesthesia, 1844

The date 1844 marks a change in use, not the beginning of knowledge about the gas. The sequence joined British pneumatic chemistry, American popular lectures, an office-based dental experiment, print and testimony, and a later commercial revival.

1. 1772: Joseph Priestley prepares the gas later called nitrous oxide. Chemical isolation was not yet a clinical method (Goerig and Schulte am Esch).
2. 1799–1800: at Thomas Beddoes's Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, Humphry Davy studies nitrous oxide through chemical, animal, and human experiments. In his 1800 Researches, he cautiously proposes possible use in operations without major blood loss. The remark was a prospect, not a reported surgical trial (Davy).
3. 10 December 1844: Colton advertises a “Grand Exhibition” of laughing gas at Union Hall, Hartford. Accounts recorded years later differ in detail, but the familiar story says Wells noticed that the participant Samuel A. Cooley had injured a leg without immediately feeling it (Smith and Hirsch).
4. 11 December 1844: Riggs extracts one of Wells's upper molars while Wells inhales gas supplied by Colton. Later witnesses disagree about who held or administered the bag; Wells himself described the result in 1847 as an extraction “without any painful sensations” (Wells; Smith and Hirsch).
5. December 1844–January 1845: Wells and Riggs use nitrous oxide in further extractions. Wells later claimed twelve or fifteen trials, with one or two patients not entirely free from pain. The cited sources provide no contemporaneous case register documenting every administration (Wells; Haridas).
6. 21–23 January 1845: Boston newspaper notices advertise Wells's proposed trials. His public tooth extraction probably occurs near the end of January, but neither its exact date nor its venue can be established securely (Haridas).
7. 16 October 1846: William T. G. Morton's public ether demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital provides witnessed hospital evidence and rapid publication. It does not erase Wells's nitrous oxide work, but it helps explain why ether travelled faster (López-Valverde et al.; Desai and Desai).
8. 1847: Wells publishes A History of the Discovery during the ether priority dispute. The pamphlet assembles his narrative, letters, and sworn affidavits to establish precedence; it is therefore both essential evidence and an advocacy document (Wells and WLM).
9. 1862–1863: Colton returns to dental use of the gas. His later versions conflict over whether renewed work began in New Britain or New Haven. By July 1863 he had opened the Colton Dental Association at Cooper Institute in New York, creating an identifiable service rather than an isolated experiment (Smith and Hirsch).
10. 1867–1868: the American dentist Thomas W. Evans and Colton demonstrate nitrous oxide in Paris and London; dental networks, apparatus, professional meetings, and print carry it into European practice (Smith and Hirsch; Goerig and Schulte am Esch).

The best-known narrative comes from recollections and affidavits produced after ether's 1846 success made priority valuable. Wells's 1847 pamphlet says that he tested the gas on himself and then treated twelve or fifteen others. Riggs's affidavit says he extracted Wells's upper molar and then joined him in further administrations. Several patients swore that their own extractions had been painless (Wells).

Those statements support repeated Hartford use, but their timing and purpose limit precision. Riggs dated the first discussion to about the beginning of November, while later accounts settled on 10–11 December. Wells also mistakenly placed his Boston journey in December 1844; surviving newspaper notices and other testimony put it in January 1845. Retrospective legal affidavits can establish what witnesses wished to affirm in 1847, not automatically fix every 1844 date or detail (Wells; Haridas).

The patients appear chiefly as witnesses to success, not as fully recorded clinical subjects. The pamphlet supplies little systematic information about dose, duration, complications, selection, or follow-up. “Painless” was a patient's reported experience and a promotional claim; it was not a standardized outcome measured under controlled conditions.

Hartford had no hospital, while Boston offered Wells medical contacts, students, and the possibility of public proof. John Collins Warren allowed him to address medical students after a lecture at the Massachusetts Medical College. The extraction itself took place that evening elsewhere, probably in a public hall on Washington Street. Contrary to a durable commemorative story, no primary evidence places it in the Massachusetts General Hospital amphitheatre later called the Ether Dome (Haridas).

The unidentified patient cried out or “hallooed” during extraction. Accounts disagree about what that response meant. Wells said the patient later reported less pain than usual and blamed early removal of the bag; one witness recalled that the patient denied pain; Morton's later account said the patient screamed from pain. Most observers treated the event as a failure or “humbug,” but the surviving testimony cannot reconstruct the patient's sensation with certainty (Haridas).

A single ambiguous case thus carried more weight than Wells's local series. The problem was social as well as pharmacological: a public demonstration needed an adequate administration, a suitable patient, credible witnesses, and a setting able to circulate the result. Morton's 1846 ether event succeeded on each of those fronts and was reported promptly in medical print (Haridas; López-Valverde et al.).

Early dental administration used nitrous oxide held in a bag and inhaled through a mouthpiece. Manufacture, purification, bag volume, leakage, timing, and the decision to remove the mouthpiece all affected the result. The patient's mouth then had to be accessible for extraction. A very short operation suited a gas whose effect was brief, but the same brevity could produce incomplete anaesthesia (Haridas; Smith and Hirsch).

Wells used the historical language of “exhilarating gas” and explained its effect as nervous excitement followed by insensibility. Colton later made incorrect claims about the gas supplying extra oxygen. Critics argued that administration of undiluted nitrous oxide caused asphyxia; Colton denied that interpretation while describing large bags and, in at least one case, alternation with air. Their categories and physiology should not be silently translated into present-day practice (Wells; Smith and Hirsch).

The American Dental Association describes current dental use as nitrous oxide–oxygen sedation delivered through systems with multiple safety features and scavenging. That later system should not be projected backwards. The 1844 and 1860s technique sought a short period of profound insensibility, often with nitrous oxide alone; the boundary between drug effect and oxygen deprivation was itself part of the nineteenth-century dispute (ADA; Goerig and Schulte am Esch; Smith and Hirsch).

Wells worked while American dentistry was beginning to build formal institutions. The first national dental journal appeared in 1839; the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery and the American Society of Dental Surgeons followed in 1840. Yet apprenticeship and self-declared practice remained common, effective licensing developed slowly, and arguments continued over whether dentistry should sit inside medicine or in separate schools (Institute of Medicine).

This setting helps explain both dentistry's experimental flexibility and Wells's search for medical endorsement. A dentist could try a new method in an office, but transforming it into accepted surgical knowledge required witnesses, institutions, print, equipment, and replication. The Boston response was not simply physicians rejecting a dentist; it was also a judgement—however hasty—about an observed result.

Colton's later success rested on a different infrastructure. By 1863 he partnered with dentists, advertised a dedicated association, manufactured large quantities of gas, and accumulated records of administrations. His reported totals and absence of deaths came from the enterprise itself, so they demonstrate scale more securely than they prove safety. The revival also remained commercial: promotion and professional evidence grew together (Smith and Hirsch).

Calling Wells the sole discoverer of anaesthesia collapses different acts. Davy identified an analgesic possibility in 1800; William E. Clarke and Crawford W. Long were associated with early ether use in 1842; Wells introduced nitrous oxide for dental pain in 1844; Morton made ether anaesthesia publicly persuasive in 1846; and Colton rebuilt nitrous oxide into a sustained dental service from 1863. The record supports specific contributions better than an exclusive first (López-Valverde et al.; Desai and Desai).

Wells's 1847 claim that he had made the principle known before Morton and Charles T. Jackson belongs to a contest over reputation, patents, and reward. His pamphlet preserves valuable witnesses, but its purpose was to win that contest. Later professional resolutions and memorials likewise record changing commemoration, not neutral adjudication of every priority claim (Wells and WLM; Smith and Hirsch).

The documented legacy is nevertheless substantial. Dentistry supplied an early setting in which inhaled pain control could be tried repeatedly on a brief operation, and dental networks later kept nitrous oxide in use when ether and chloroform dominated much surgical discussion. The episode belongs within the wider history of surgery and pain, but its distinctive history runs through the dental office, the gas bag, the patient's report, and the problem of public proof.