Discovery by Horace Wells of the applicability of nitrous oxyd gas, sulphuric ether and other vapors in surgical operations nearly two years before the patented discovery of Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W.T.G. Morton.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discovery by Horace Wells of the applicability of nitrous oxyd gas, sulphuric ether and other vapors in surgical operations nearly two years before the patented discovery of Drs. Charles T. Jackson and W.T.G. Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/54 (page 6)
    practicability of inducing total insensibility t(^ pain under surgical operations with safety to the patient, as a fact of science, was entirely un¬ known. It was in the autumn of that year, that the late Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, in the State of Connecticut, directed his attention particular¬ ly to this subject, and made the experiments of Avhich we are about to speak. In a publication issued to the world just before his lamejited death, he makes the following statement: lleas- oning from analogy,” he says, ‘H was led to be¬ lieve that surgical operations might he performed without pain, by the fact that an individual, when much excited from ordinary causes, may receive severe wounds without manifesting- the least pain; as for instance, the man who is engaged in combat may have a limb severed from his body, after which he testifies that it was attend¬ ed with no ])ain at the time; and so the man who is intoxicated with spiritous liquor, may be severely beaten without his manifesting jiain, and his frame in this state seems to be more te¬ nacious of life than under ordinary circumstan¬ ces. Jly these facts I was led to enquire if the same result would not follow by the inhalation ol exhilerating gas, the elfects of which would