Discovery by the late Dr. 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.

  • Wales, J.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discovery by the late Dr. 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.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    placed them above suspicion, who had been the subjects of these experiments, in 1844, and as- sured him they were attended with no pain whatever; and that he had no doubt in his own mind that Dr. Wells discovered, and made the first application of this principle in surgical op- erations. Besides this, we have the testimony of the great body of physicians and surgeons, resident in Hartford, shewing their general ac- quaintance with these experiments and their confidence in them, and in the honor and integ- rity of Dr. Wells. 7. That Dr. Wells, after he had made this dis- covery, did, in the latter part of the year 1844, proceed to Boston, address the class of Dr. J. C. Warren of the Massachusetts General Hospital upon the subject of rendering the system insen- sible to pain during surgical operations, by the inhalation of exhilarating gas, and perform an operation before them for the purpose of test- ing his discovery in their presence, is fully es- tablished by the testimony of Drs. Kennedy, Mignault, and Taft, and by that of other witness- es. It is true the experiment was not fully suc- cessful, by reason of the failure of the patient to take ft sufficient quantityof the gas, but that, so far prom disproving the fact of the discovery,