Posts Tagged dentistry

Have you ever imagined what it was like to get a tooth pulled back in the 1800’s? Lack of regular check-ups often meant that the first and last resort for many suffering from tooth decay was extraction. Painful under even the best of circumstances, an inexperienced tooth-drawer armed with a pair of pliers-like forceps, or more commonly a tooth key (an iron hook on the end of a “T”-shaped handle) might easily break the patient’s jaw, or pull out healthy teeth and even bits of jawbone along with an aching molar. Through infection, this excruciating deformation could prove fatal.

Ooh, just the thought of that makes me cringe! Horace Wells takes his wife out on a date on December 10, 1844. Horace was a dentist who more than likely had been using the crude methods of the day when he removed teeth. The show he and his wife were going to see was going to be performed by a “Professor” Gardner Quincy Colton. Part of the act was having volunteers from the audience inhale laughing gas. And we all know what happens when you inhale laughing gas. You basically act drunk, have uncontrollable laughter, and say and do stupid things. This amused the audience. On this night, one of the participants ran into the audience chasing an imaginary enemy. When he returned to his seat, he realized he had a lacerated leg, but didn’t start to feel pain until the effects of the gas wore off.

Horace immediately thought how this laughing gas could be used in dentistry. He asked the Professor to come to his practice so they could perform a tooth extraction using nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Horace had a patient who had a troublesome tooth and used him as the guinea pig. The professor administered enough gas to render the poor soul unconscious. One of Horace’s assistants removed the tooth successfully without any pain to the patient. After this success the professor and Horace become partners and collaborate to perform pain-free operations on several patients. They used a crude method to administer the gas, but it worked, and it appeared complication-free.

After about a dozen operations Horace’s assistant, William Morton urges him to go public with it. Reluctantly he agrees to give a lecture and demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital. But unfortunately, it was a major flop. When the gas was administered to the patient, they had removed the gasbag too soon. The patient was in a twilight sleep, but not completely unconscious when his tooth was extracted. The patient testified that he felt pain, although not as bad as when he wasn’t given any anesthetic. He couldn’t repeat the demonstration as there were no other patients present. The doctors brushed him off, and considered the demonstration a “humbug affair.” They booed him out the lecture hall. Embarrassed and defeated he returned home and sold his practice. He became even more morose when he finds out his assistant, Morton had developed an ether-based anesthesia and was using it in hospitals with great success.

He lived in France for a while, but couldn’t revived his career. He moved back to the states and started to experiment with chloroform which made him increasingly unhinged. He attacks two prostitutes with sulfuric acid and is sent to prison, where he commits suicide. He cut a large artery in his leg, after inhaling chloroform to stop the pain. He used his anesthesia research to help him commit his own painless death.