Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We recently talked about Humphrey Davy, including his
Speaker 1: work with nitrous oxide, and we talked about how it
Speaker 1: wasn't until later that people really started using nitrous oxide
Speaker 1: for medical purposes rather than for recreation. Prior hosts talked
Speaker 1: about the shift to more medical use in their episode
Speaker 1: called Horace Wells and the Gas War, and that originally
Speaker 1: came out April thirtieth, twenty twelve. Of course, that means
Speaker 1: this episode includes some references to medical and dental experiments
Speaker 1: and procedures that were being done without any kind of anesthesis,
Speaker 1: So if you're squeamish about that, heads up. And there
Speaker 1: are some references to some unethical experimentation. Also. The later
Speaker 1: part of Wells's story involves drug misuse on his part
Speaker 1: and a violent attack that he made against two sex
Speaker 1: workers while under the influence. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to Blaine and
Speaker 2: Chucker Boarding and I'm faird douty. And it always surprised
Speaker 2: me when I was growing up that going to the
Speaker 2: dentist was characterized as such a dreaded event until that
Speaker 2: is I got my first cavity a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, you remember this, like waking up
Speaker 2: and watching Saturday morning cartoons and it seemed like all
Speaker 2: the little kid characters hated going to the dentists. I
Speaker 2: never got that. But then when I got my first cavity,
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, yeah, this sucks. The drilling, the tugging.
Speaker 2: Even though you can't really feel the pain while it's
Speaker 2: going on, it's still just so uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: I actually haven't had a cavity yet, so ut I mean,
Speaker 3: knock on wood here, I don't want to tell yeah.
Speaker 2: In the pod you're still yeah, it could happen.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean I agree with your old perspective.
Speaker 3: Going to the dentist. Isn't that bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get treats, you know, you get free toothpaste
Speaker 2: or whatever. People are nice to you. It's fine. So
Speaker 2: many of you, like me have probably experience some of
Speaker 2: those the darker side of dental procedures, And I mean
Speaker 2: I didn't even experience the worst of it. I can
Speaker 2: only imagine what having a tooth pulled would be like,
Speaker 2: And in researching today's subject, I not only had to
Speaker 2: imagine what that would be like, I had to imagine
Speaker 2: what it would be like without the glorious numbing effects
Speaker 2: of anesthesia, because in the time we're going back to,
Speaker 2: which is the early eighteen hundreds, anesthesia and its applications
Speaker 2: and medical procedures had not been discovered yet. Our subject.
Speaker 2: Horse Wells was one of the first to realize that
Speaker 2: certain substances nitrous oxide in particular, which were used at
Speaker 2: the time for recreation and entertainment, could actually be applied
Speaker 2: to the medical arena, and the first he was the
Speaker 2: first to really try to convince the medical community of such.
Speaker 3: But things didn't really quite turn out quite as he
Speaker 3: had hoped, and it led to a bitter competition for
Speaker 3: notoriety with his contemporaries that his wife dubbed the gas War.
Speaker 3: So we're going to look at the build up too
Speaker 3: and the fallout from this so called gas war, as
Speaker 3: well as Welles's tragic later life that some people believe
Speaker 3: made him the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Doctor Juckyll
Speaker 3: and mister Hyde.
Speaker 2: Before we get into Well's story, though, we need to
Speaker 2: point out that while he's often credited as the discoverer
Speaker 2: of anesthesia, Inhalaesian anesthesia specifically. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: people who played a part in this discovery. English chemist
Speaker 2: and natural philosopher Joseph Priestley, for example, first discovered nitrous
Speaker 2: oxide gas in seventeen seventy two. Later that century, British
Speaker 2: scientist Sir Humphrey Davey started experimenting with it, and he
Speaker 2: realized that inhaling it made him burst out into waves
Speaker 2: of laughter, hence how it got to be known as
Speaker 2: laughing gas. It also brought on a euphoric state. Michael Faraday,
Speaker 2: Davy's associate, found in eighteen fifteen that ether produced similar effects.
Speaker 3: So by eighteen hundred or so, Davey had realized that
Speaker 3: nitrous oxide's promise as a painkiller was really there, and
Speaker 3: it's medical applications where they are too, and he included
Speaker 3: those thoughts in some of his writings. But for some reason,
Speaker 3: the medical community didn't really do anything with this information
Speaker 3: at the time, and instead nitrous oxide and sometimes ether
Speaker 3: two became a huge hit with the upper class, who
Speaker 3: would throw these laughing gas parties where guests would use
Speaker 3: the gas recreationally for those euphoric effects that Dublina just mentioned.
Speaker 3: They would suck the gas out of balloons and laughing
Speaker 3: gus also became a form of entertainment for the masses too.
Speaker 3: Traveling shows would charge admission and allow volunteers to try
Speaker 3: some of the gas out, and then the rest of
Speaker 3: the audience would just watch this volunteer stumble around and
Speaker 3: act all funny and weird.
Speaker 2: It could be that because nitrous oxide was associated with
Speaker 2: this silliness, the medical community didn't really take it seriously
Speaker 2: of the sideshow act, right, and that might be one
Speaker 2: explanation for why it wasn't used in medical applications at
Speaker 2: this time. Meanwhile, surgeries and dental procedures, though like tooth extraction,
Speaker 2: continued to be carried out without any anesthesia. Patients would
Speaker 2: sometimes get a swig of alcohol or opium or mandrake maybe,
Speaker 2: but these weren't really great solutions because they often just
Speaker 2: made patients even harder to handle, and if you gave
Speaker 2: them too much, it could kill them.
Speaker 3: A good example of this from a recent episode would
Speaker 3: be poorled mister Bronte with his eye surgery, and how
Speaker 3: I just imagine how horrific something like that would be
Speaker 3: without any kind of sedative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also read an account in The New Republic
Speaker 2: of a nineteenth century surgery, and it mentioned how a
Speaker 2: patient was having tongue cancer removed, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: he had to be held down and restrained because you
Speaker 2: know that you're completely aware of what's going on, and
Speaker 2: you're completely you want to get away, you know, the
Speaker 2: surgeon just had to cut the tongue off as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible, and then the guy sort of got away,
Speaker 2: he got out of his restraints and it had to
Speaker 2: be chased down so that they could cauterize the wound,
Speaker 2: and ended up burning his lip in the process. And
Speaker 2: it was kind of a mess. And that's why for
Speaker 2: surgeons speed was really a virtue at the time. It
Speaker 2: was hard to make a lot of advancements in surgery, though,
Speaker 2: because you were just trying to get things done as quickly.
Speaker 3: As possible for your patient escapes.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So this was the state of the medical community when
Speaker 2: Horace Wells came onto the scene. He was born January
Speaker 2: twenty first, eighteen fifteen, in Hartford, Vermont, into a well
Speaker 2: to do family. He was descended from old school New
Speaker 2: England aristocrats. His grandfather had even served in the American Revolution,
Speaker 2: and as wealthy landowner, as Well's parents were able to
Speaker 2: give him pretty much everything that he needed while growing up.
Speaker 2: He went to private schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: and according to an article by Peter H. Jacobson and
Speaker 2: Anesthesia Progress, Wells proved to be intelligent and inventive at
Speaker 2: a very early age.
Speaker 3: So in eighteen thirty four, when Wells was about nineteen
Speaker 3: years old, he started training as a dentist in Boston
Speaker 3: by a way of what was known then as the
Speaker 3: preceptor system. That basically meant that he learned by being
Speaker 3: an apprentice to another dentist. We may have discussed this
Speaker 3: in the McCullough interview a little bit.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 3: There weren't any dental schools at the time, and the
Speaker 3: first one didn't open until eighteen forty in Baltimore, so
Speaker 3: this was really the only way you could learn a
Speaker 3: profession like this.
Speaker 2: In eighteen thirty six, Wells moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and
Speaker 2: he opened a practice there which became really successful, really quickly.
Speaker 2: He was considered one of the best dentists in town,
Speaker 2: and his patients included people like the governor and his family,
Speaker 2: several other politicians, and some elite businessmen as well. He
Speaker 2: married Elizabeth Wales in eighteen thirty eight and they had
Speaker 2: one son in eighteen thirty nine. He also had students
Speaker 2: who worked with him pretty early on, even though he
Speaker 2: was a young dentist himself. Two of these students were
Speaker 2: John M. Riggs and William T. G. Morton, who become
Speaker 2: major characters later on in this story. Riggs ended up
Speaker 2: practicing in Hartford, right near Wells, and Morton moved on
Speaker 2: to practice in Boston.
Speaker 3: So at twenty three years old, Wells wrote a small
Speaker 3: book called An Essay on Teeth that talked about oral
Speaker 3: diseases and how to treat them, as well as more
Speaker 3: general oral hygiene, tooth development, preventative care, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of dental basics, and he was really passionate about preventative
Speaker 3: dentistry and children's dentistry too. I mean, I would imagine
Speaker 3: if you're seeing all these things, you try to think
Speaker 3: of ways to avoid them. But the main thing Wells
Speaker 3: did in his practice was, unfortunately, extract teeth, and he
Speaker 3: was always really troubled by the amount of pain his
Speaker 3: patients would have to go through to have a tooth pulled,
Speaker 3: so he was always trying to think of ways to
Speaker 3: help that situation make it a little bit better. And
Speaker 3: as mentioned, he had a very inventive mind. He invented
Speaker 3: and made his own instrument, so it's not too surprising
Speaker 3: that this problem would eventually set the wheels in his
Speaker 3: head turning.
Speaker 2: According to Jacobson's article, in about eighteen forty, Wells told
Speaker 2: Hartford physician Linus P. Brocket that he was quote deeply
Speaker 2: impressed with the idea that some discovery would yet be
Speaker 2: made by which dental and other operations might be performed
Speaker 2: without pain. But Wells hadn't come up with any sort
Speaker 2: of solution himself yet when on December tenth, eighteen forty four,
Speaker 2: he read in the Hertford Current that there would be
Speaker 2: laughing gas exhibition, the kind of the kind that we mentioned.
Speaker 3: A little earlier.
Speaker 2: That's fun, right, So it was going to be put
Speaker 2: on that evening in the city by Gardner Q. Colton.
Speaker 2: It was billed as quote a grand exhibition of the
Speaker 2: effects produced by inhaling nitrous oxide exhilarating or laughing gas.
Speaker 2: And I have that Hartford Current article here, a little
Speaker 2: piece from it, and I just wanted to kind of
Speaker 2: read a little description of this event and see you
Speaker 2: can decide if you would have been enticed by it
Speaker 2: to come to this. What it says after the introduction,
Speaker 2: where it kind of says a grand exhibition of the
Speaker 2: effects produced by inhaling nitrosoxide is forty gallons of gas
Speaker 2: will be prepared and administered to all in the audience
Speaker 2: who desire to inhale it. Twelve young men have volunteered
Speaker 2: to inhale the gas to commence the entertainment, Eight strong
Speaker 2: men are engaged to occupy the front seats to protect
Speaker 2: those under the influence of the gas from injuring themselves
Speaker 2: or others. This course is adopted so that no apprehension
Speaker 2: of danger may be entertained. Probably no one will attempt
Speaker 2: to fight. The effect of the gas is to make
Speaker 2: those who inhale it either laugh, sing, dance, speak, or fight,
Speaker 2: and etc. Etc. According to the leading trait of their character.
Speaker 2: They seem to remain conscious enough not to say or
Speaker 2: do that which they would have occasion to regret. Oh,
Speaker 2: I would so be there, Oh totally so. Colton would
Speaker 2: travel around to various cities putting on these ships. Most
Speaker 2: sources say that he had been a med student one
Speaker 2: time and that's how he got introduced to nitrous oxide
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 3: So Wells did decide he had the same opinion we did.
Speaker 3: He decided to go, and he took his wife to
Speaker 3: the event that evening too, and they witnessed what was
Speaker 3: probably pretty typical for one of these exhibitions. According to
Speaker 3: an article by Henry Wood Irving, probably a talk later
Speaker 3: printed in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Culton
Speaker 3: started off by giving a brief lecture about nitrous oxide
Speaker 3: and its properties, you know, a little bit of science talk,
Speaker 3: and then he took the first dose of the gas himself,
Speaker 3: something that he always did, maybe to reassure the audience
Speaker 3: nothing too bad was going to happen. The gas he
Speaker 3: used was contained in a rubber bag, and he'd administer
Speaker 3: it through a kind of wooden faucet. Irving actually compared
Speaker 3: it to what might be used in country cider barrels.
Speaker 3: But after Coulton had exhibited the effects of the gas
Speaker 3: for everybody to see, he would invite up those volunteers
Speaker 3: onto the stage to get their fix. One of the
Speaker 3: volunteers that evening, the evening that Wells was there was
Speaker 3: a young drugstore clerk named Sam Cooley, who happened to
Speaker 3: be sitting right near Wells.
Speaker 2: What happened to Cooley when he took the gas turned
Speaker 2: out to be particularly interesting. He of course, started behaving
Speaker 2: really erratically, and, according to Irving, suddenly zeroed in on
Speaker 2: an audience member and mistook him for some imaginary enemy
Speaker 2: that he had made up in his head. He ate
Speaker 2: strong men exactly. Cooley then jumped the ropes and started
Speaker 2: chasing the sky around the exhibition hall. At one point
Speaker 2: he even leapt over a settee after him, and then
Speaker 2: finally came to his sensus. Eventually, when Cooley sat back down,
Speaker 2: Wells noticed him sort of roll up his pant leg
Speaker 2: and reveal an injured and bleeding wound. When Wells questioned
Speaker 2: him about it, Cooley said that he hadn't noticed it
Speaker 2: happened at all. He had felt no pain until the
Speaker 2: nitrous oxide wore off, and then he sort of realized like,
Speaker 2: oh that kind of risli, Yeah, what happened, and then
Speaker 2: he rolled up his pant leg and saw it. That's
Speaker 2: when Wells had his light bulb moment, realizing what nitrous
Speaker 2: oxide could mean for the dental and medical professions. According
Speaker 2: to Jacobson's article, Wells approached Coulton after the show and said, quote,
Speaker 2: why cannot a man have a tooth extracted and not
Speaker 2: feel it under the effects of the gas? Colton said
Speaker 2: he didn't know, to which Wells replied, quote, well, I
Speaker 2: believe it can be done. Of course, he still had
Speaker 2: to put that theory to the test.
Speaker 3: But Wells didn't really waste any time in doing that.
Speaker 3: He arranged for Colton to meet him the next morning
Speaker 3: at his office with some nitrous oxide, and he also
Speaker 3: told his colleague and former student Rigs, who he mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: about this idea and recruited him to come help out
Speaker 3: with the procedure. Finding a test subject wasn't really tough
Speaker 3: at all, because Wells himself had a decaying wisdom tooth
Speaker 3: that was really bothering him, and he proposed that he
Speaker 3: would inhale the nitrous oxide and then have Rigs pull
Speaker 3: out the tooth. So they all met up at Wells'
Speaker 3: office next morning as planned, the morning of December eleventh,
Speaker 3: eighteen forty four. Wells riggs Colton in this bag of gas.
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like it's going to be a joke,
Speaker 3: set up or something. Cooley was there too, since he
Speaker 3: was sort of the guy who had set this whole
Speaker 3: thing off, And when Wells sat down in the dental chair,
Speaker 3: he inhaled the nitrous oxide from Colton's bag, and then,
Speaker 3: according to Irving's article, it was more than anybody had
Speaker 3: inhaled before, but not quite enough to make him totally unconscious.
Speaker 3: He wanted to really test this theory out.
Speaker 2: Once he was under the influence, Riggs extracted the wisdom tooth,
Speaker 2: which he later said took great force to extract. So
Speaker 2: it's not like he was pulling any punches here. It's
Speaker 2: not like it was a ye had to put life
Speaker 2: procedure right. And Wells didn't exhibit any discomfort at all
Speaker 2: throughout the whole thing. He stayed pretty much doped up
Speaker 2: for a little while after the procedure, but when he
Speaker 2: finally came to Wells is said to have exclaimed, quote,
Speaker 2: it is the greatest discovery ever made. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: so much as the prick of a pin. A new
Speaker 2: era in tooth pulling.
Speaker 3: So after this, Rigs and Wells devoted most of their
Speaker 3: time to testing out nitrous oxide on at least twelve
Speaker 3: to fifteen other patients. And according to Jacobson's article, Wells
Speaker 3: also administered the gas for two Hertford doctors who used
Speaker 3: it during operation. So the use of gas worked in
Speaker 3: all of these trial cases, it seemed like it was
Speaker 3: really going to be a great new innovation.
Speaker 2: Wells said later that they experimented with other gases too,
Speaker 2: including ether, but after consulting with a local physician, he
Speaker 2: decided to stick with the nitrous oxide because it was
Speaker 2: considered safer. After these additional tests, so to speak, Wells
Speaker 2: decided that it was time to share what he'd found
Speaker 2: with the medical community at large. He later wrote, quote
Speaker 2: on making this discovery, I was so elated respecting it
Speaker 2: that I expended my money freely and devoted my whole
Speaker 2: time for several weeks in order to present it to
Speaker 2: those who were best qualified to investigate and decide upon
Speaker 2: its merits, not asking or expecting anything from my services.
Speaker 2: Well assured that it was a valuable discovery. I was
Speaker 2: desirous that it should be as free as the air
Speaker 2: we breathe. And that's important to remember that he said that,
Speaker 2: because it kind of sets him apart from some of
Speaker 2: the other people who claimed the discovery. Later attagonists, yes,
Speaker 2: so he looked into making a presentation in Boston, which
Speaker 2: was the important hub in the US at the time,
Speaker 2: the Medical Hub Medical Hub exactly. In doing so, he
Speaker 2: reconnected with his old student and colleague Morton, who'd been
Speaker 2: studying medicine, who had just begun studying medicine at Harvard.
Speaker 3: So Wells told Morton about his discovery, and Morton helped
Speaker 3: put him in contact with one of his chemistry professors,
Speaker 3: a guy named Charles Jackson, who wasn't really much help
Speaker 3: because he was so skeptical of this whole thing. Then
Speaker 3: he put him in touch with doctor John Collins Warren,
Speaker 3: who was a professor of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Speaker 3: Warren was pretty skeptical too, but he still agreed to
Speaker 3: let Wells demonstrate his method in front of a room
Speaker 3: full of senior medical students. Which This demonstration took place
Speaker 3: January twentieth, eighteen forty five, and Wells was supposed to
Speaker 3: administer nitrous oxide to a patient who was scheduled to
Speaker 3: have an amputation, but the surgery ended up being canceled,
Speaker 3: so Wells instead proposed, well, let's do a tooth extraction,
Speaker 3: and there was a student present who stepped up as
Speaker 3: a volunteer. It's kind of hard to imagine now, a
Speaker 3: medical student being like, you can work on me because
Speaker 3: I have this tooth that needs to come out. But
Speaker 3: that's what happened. He had a willing patient there, so.
Speaker 2: Wells had the student inhale the gas, and when he
Speaker 2: thought he was ready, he started to extract the tooth.
Speaker 2: The student seemed okay at first, but then he cried
Speaker 2: out at some point during the extraction, and the whole
Speaker 2: thing was considered a failure and called, quote a humbug affair.
Speaker 2: Wells was literally booed off stage and he went back
Speaker 2: to Hartford just devastated. Wells theorized later that he'd taken
Speaker 2: away the gas applied to early and that the student
Speaker 2: hadn't been completely under its influence during the procedure, and
Speaker 2: that's why maybe he felt something, though not as much
Speaker 2: as he would have felt if he hadn't had anything. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 2: according to an article by Stuart Finder in Anesthesia Progress,
Speaker 2: the student later admitted that he didn't feel the tooth
Speaker 2: being pulled.
Speaker 3: So he just cried out, maybe because something else, I
Speaker 3: don't know. Regardless, though Wells took the whole thing really
Speaker 3: pretty hard, and he gave up his dental practice for
Speaker 3: a while, and by spring of eighteen forty five he
Speaker 3: was referring all of his patients to Riggs. He said
Speaker 3: his experience in Boston brought on quote an illness from
Speaker 3: which I did not recover for many months. He finally
Speaker 3: started practicing dentistry again sporadically later in the year. He
Speaker 3: continued to use nitrous oxides successfully during procedures. I mean
Speaker 3: interesting that he's still so sure that it works, but
Speaker 3: he takes it so hard this fiasco in Boston. He
Speaker 3: did other stuff too, though, and according to Jacobson's article,
Speaker 3: he arranged a natural history exhibition in Hartford called Panorama
Speaker 3: of Nature, and he also patented a new kind of
Speaker 3: shower bath.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, though, others had begun to share Well's
Speaker 2: interest in Inhalaitian anesthesia, namely his old buddy Morton. In
Speaker 2: eighteen forty six, Morton announced his discovery of ether as
Speaker 2: an anesthetic, saying that he'd tested it successfully on many patients,
Speaker 2: and according to an article by UCLA professor fa Caranza
Speaker 2: on the discovery of anesthesia, it was Morton's old mentor, Jackson,
Speaker 2: who'd actually suggested that Morton use ether in place of
Speaker 2: nitrous oxide in his experiments. On October tenth of that year,
Speaker 2: Morton demonstrated his technique at Massachusetts General Hospital during an
Speaker 2: operation in which doctor Warren removed a tumor from a
Speaker 2: patient's neck. It was a scenario that was very similar,
Speaker 2: of course, to the Wells had faced before, but it
Speaker 2: was considered a success, and the entire medical community was
Speaker 2: paying attention to what Morton was doing.
Speaker 3: Still though, it almost immediately kicked off a controversy about
Speaker 3: who deserved credit for the discovery of anesthesia, and Wells
Speaker 3: wrote a calm collected letter to the Hartford Current in
Speaker 3: December of eighteen forty six, basically outlying his previous experiments
Speaker 3: with nitrous oxide, the events surrounding his visit to Boston,
Speaker 3: and he also pointed out some of the things we've
Speaker 3: already discussed, you know, why his demonstration didn't work, and
Speaker 3: also the fact that he'd used ether in the past
Speaker 3: but really preferred to work with nitrous oxide. You know,
Speaker 3: he hadn't been completely clueless about ether.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that was one of the points that was
Speaker 2: probably being great at the time, is that, oh, it
Speaker 2: was ether that works and not nitrous oxide, and you
Speaker 2: were working with the wrong thing. When he's like, well, actually, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have worked with these other things too, but I
Speaker 2: just decided this was the better way to go. But
Speaker 2: Wells and Morton weren't the only ones competing for credit here.
Speaker 2: Jackson all so stepped up to the challenge since he
Speaker 2: had suggested ether to Morton, he said, the whole thing
Speaker 2: was really his idea. Even though if you'll remember when
Speaker 2: Wells wanted to do this demonstration, it's we're skeptical, very
Speaker 2: skeptical of the whole thing. Another doctor, one that we
Speaker 2: know the name of well being living in Georgia, doctor
Speaker 2: Crawford Long of Georgia, also came forward around this time,
Speaker 2: and he claimed that he'd used ether during surgeries for
Speaker 2: anesthetic purposes as far back as eighteen forty two, so
Speaker 2: a few years before, a couple of years before Wells
Speaker 2: had started experimenting with it.
Speaker 3: It's Crawford Long's name that I've always heard connected to
Speaker 3: this whole subject, So there you go.
Speaker 2: But Long, for whatever reason, never demonstrated this to the
Speaker 2: public or communicated it to the medical community until after
Speaker 2: Morton's success became public.
Speaker 3: So all of this back and forth. All of this
Speaker 3: battling kicked off what Wells's wife later called the Gas
Speaker 3: War according to Jacobson's article, and Wells really made it
Speaker 3: his mission and after that to prove his claim to
Speaker 3: the discovery, he traveled to Europe in late eighteen forty six, which,
Speaker 3: as we've discussed in the past, was kind of the
Speaker 3: center of medical innovation at the time. He gave some
Speaker 3: demonstrations at medical institutions in Paris and petitioned the Academy
Speaker 3: of Medicine and the French Academy of Sciences and the
Speaker 3: Parisian Medical Society with his claim by February eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 3: you know, really trying to get his name out there.
Speaker 3: After that little European tour, he came back to the
Speaker 3: United States and published a pamphlet called History of the
Speaker 3: Discovery of the Application of Nitrous oxide, gas, ether and
Speaker 3: other vapors to Surgical operations, which also asserted that he
Speaker 3: deserved the credit for the discovery of anesthesia.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, Wells also started experimenting more with ether
Speaker 2: and chloroforms forms of fantasthesia. He moved to New York
Speaker 2: City actually in January eighteen forty eight, where he continued
Speaker 2: sporadically practicing dentistry and administering anesthesia and experimenting on the side.
Speaker 2: Along the way, though, he became addicted to the chloroform
Speaker 2: that he was experimenting with, and on the evening of
Speaker 2: January twenty first, eighteen forty eight, which was his thirty
Speaker 2: third birthday, while under the influence of chloroform, Wells took
Speaker 2: some sulphuric acid from his office and threw it on
Speaker 2: to prostitutes, burning one of their necks. After this, he
Speaker 2: was jailed in Tombs prison. He was allowed to get
Speaker 2: a few things from home though before getting locked up,
Speaker 2: and two of the things he brought with him were
Speaker 2: some chloroform and a razor.
Speaker 3: On January twenty fourth, eighteen forty eight, he inhaled some
Speaker 3: chloroform while in his cell and then committed suicide by
Speaker 3: slashing his left femoral artery. Twelve days or so before
Speaker 3: he died, the Parisian Medical Society voted that he was
Speaker 3: quote do all the honors of having first discovered and
Speaker 3: successfully applied the use of vapors or gases, whereby surgical
Speaker 3: operations could be performed without pain. So he got that
Speaker 3: recognition that he was trying to get. It also gave
Speaker 3: him an honorary MD and made him an honorary member
Speaker 3: of the society. But of course Wells didn't learn about
Speaker 3: any of this before his death.
Speaker 2: So it was a sad end for a guy who
Speaker 2: was really passionate about his career and about reducing patient's pain.
Speaker 2: Ultimately that's what he wanted. But it was that decline
Speaker 2: towards the end that some say influenced the Doctor Jekyl
Speaker 2: and mister Hyde's story. So I don't know if there
Speaker 2: are some literary buffs out there who can make the
Speaker 2: connections and want to. I've read the book, but I
Speaker 2: read it a long time ago, so here.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I can see the connection between self experimenting,
Speaker 3: which I know is a common thing in the medical
Speaker 3: world at this time, but sure making yourself into from
Speaker 3: somebody who's respectable and innovative into somebody who is burning
Speaker 3: prostitutes with selfioric as.
Speaker 2: A little bit of a monster. He continued to receive
Speaker 2: honors even after his death, though in eighteen sixty four
Speaker 2: and eighteen seventy respectively, the American Dental Association in the
Speaker 2: American medical asociation both recognize Wells as the discoverer of anesthesia.
Speaker 2: Of course, as we mentioned earlier in this podcast, this
Speaker 2: is still sort of a debated point, since others such
Speaker 2: as Long, may have used inhalation agents earlier than Wells did.
Speaker 2: And as you mentioned, I mean, that's who you think
Speaker 2: of when you think of the discovery of anesthesia. For
Speaker 2: other people, it might be Morton. So there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people that could lay claim to this, but
Speaker 2: it's Wells who really recognize the true potential of what
Speaker 2: he'd found and sought to get the word out about
Speaker 2: it with apparently no desire for profit. And it's that
Speaker 2: point again that we come back to because Morton handled
Speaker 2: it differently he did.
Speaker 3: I mean, Morton, on the other hand, did appear to
Speaker 3: have personal gain in mind when it came to anesthesia,
Speaker 3: and at first he tried to keep the type of
Speaker 3: gas he was using secret. He called it letheon and
Speaker 3: tried to disguise it scent. He wanted to try to
Speaker 3: make it a patented gas because of course everybody was
Speaker 3: interested in using it at this point, But it eventually
Speaker 3: came out that it was just ether. You know, it's
Speaker 3: something that anybody could get a hold of and hospitals
Speaker 3: and other institutions were allowed to use it as they wished.
Speaker 3: It wasn't under any one individual's control.
Speaker 2: And after that, Morton still tried to get a patent.
Speaker 2: He tried to pat and he's like, Okay, if I
Speaker 2: can't patent the gas itself, maybe I can patent its
Speaker 2: method of use. He seemed determined to try to make
Speaker 2: money off of this discovery, and even after Well's death,
Speaker 2: Morton and Jackson continued their little gas war. They continued
Speaker 2: to compete to be recognized as the true discoverer of anesthesia,
Speaker 2: and they both pursued a one hundred thousand dollars award
Speaker 2: for the honor from US Congress. Morton even tried to
Speaker 2: bribe people like Rigs and even Well's widow to lobby
Speaker 2: for him in this respect, but ultimately neither I've ever
Speaker 2: got the cash.
Speaker 3: Sounds like it got pretty pretty dirty at the end there,
Speaker 3: so Wells the supporters continued to defend him. And if
Speaker 3: there was truly a winner in the gas war, I mean,
Speaker 3: it sounds like just a lot of tragedy came out
Speaker 3: of it. If there was a winner, it was probably
Speaker 3: just society at large. You know that you wouldn't have
Speaker 3: to get your eye surgery like mister Bronte, or get
Speaker 3: your wisdom tooth yanked out without something delling the pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, going to the dentist could be a pleasure for
Speaker 2: people everywhere rather than just something that you dread. And
Speaker 2: the use of anesthesia was of course adopted all over
Speaker 2: the world, although there was some resistance to this along
Speaker 2: the way. Today we know that there are many different
Speaker 2: types of anesthesia that have allowed for all sorts of
Speaker 2: medical innovations. And so you know, no matter who we
Speaker 2: can give total credit to for discovering anesthesia, probably all
Speaker 2: of these people. There's no doubt that it did good.
Speaker 3: And I feel like there's one more person we have
Speaker 3: to mention outside of this gas Wars fiasco. But Queen
Speaker 3: Victoria helped really popularize the use of anesthesia because she
Speaker 3: used it, I think and maybe her last or maybe
Speaker 3: even her last two pregnancies or her childbirth, and it
Speaker 3: helped send the message that this was something okay, it
Speaker 3: was safe. If the Queen was using it, you're good
Speaker 3: to go to.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, from a moral standpoint, I think one of the
Speaker 2: reasons people were opposed to using it is because a
Speaker 2: lot of religious institutions, for example, thought that you were
Speaker 2: supposed to, especially during childbirth, you're supposed to feel that pain.
Speaker 2: And her using it in childbirth for one of her children,
Speaker 2: I think just sort of made it, like you said,
Speaker 2: it made it a little better, made it okay for
Speaker 2: more people. And of course we couldn't get out without
Speaker 2: making a Queen Victoria reference, the Queen of podcast cameos,
Speaker 2: I know, name dropping.
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