Dr. Wells, the discoverer of anaesthesia.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Wells, the discoverer of anaesthesia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    amongst enlightened nations such a man should have been suf¬ fered to live almost unregarded and to perish comparatively unknown ? Have the cries and shrieks of pain from battle fields and hospitals died out in eternal silence under the in¬ fluence of this discovery, while he breathed his last in neglect and sorrow, and does no statue of the immortal benefactor grace vestibule or place ? Can lying impostors and charla¬ tans appropriate his honors, and, denying his merits, grasp undeserved rewards from the blinded multitude of even phi¬ losophers, statesmen, and men of science? Dead, like the great philosopher, Sir Humphry Davy, as the consequence of pursuing too far his own discoveries—devoured like the fabled Actseon, by his own hounds, let the world now come forward and do deserved albeit tardy justice to his merits and his memory. Reminded once more of injustice to him by late accounts of military hospital practice on the great battle-fields of Italy, Montebello, Magenta, and Solferino, if we would finally vin¬ dicate his claims to the memory of a public benefactor, action can no longer be delayed, because a few more years sped, and the host of unimpeachable living witnesses will be gone from the stage of action, leaving to another generation the per¬ formance of a sacred duty—a duty which fairly belongs to the present. As a powerful synopsis of the case then, as an introduction to the question at issue, let us first appeal to one of the most eloquent articles concerning this matter that we have ever seen on any subject. It is high authority too, from the edito¬ rial department of a late number of the Virginia Medical Journal, published at the capital of that State. “ Who discovered Ancesthesia ?” “Nineteen years ago this summer, Dr. L. P. Brockett, a physician now, but then a student in Hartford, Connecticut, having recently had a molar tooth extracted which gave him great pain, was talking with the dentist on various subjects, when the conversation turned on the intoxicating influences of nitrous oxide gas. The dentist remarked : 4 That he be-