Horace Wells
Horace Wells (born January 21, 1815 in Hartford , Vermont , † January 24, 1848 in New York City ) was an American dentist. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern anesthesia .
After studying chemistry, Wells opened a dental practice with William TG Morton in Hartford, Connecticut . At a fair on December 10, 1844, at which laughing gas was used for public amusement because of its intoxicating effect, Wells discovered the anesthetic (side) effect of laughing gas by chance when a man in a drunkenness stumbled over an edge without the slightest Sensation of pain pulled a heavily bleeding shin wound. Wells then began to experiment with various inhalation anesthetics , including the ether later attributed to Morton , which, however, he considered unsuitable due to its side effects. After all, he was the first to successfully use nitrous oxide anesthesia, which was used well into the 20th century, for tooth extraction in his practice.
When Wells wanted to make his discovery known to the medical public at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1845 , his experiment probably failed because of an incorrect dosage in an overweight alcoholic, in whom Wells used nitrous oxide anesthesia as part of a tooth extraction. As a result, Wells' reputation in the professional world was ruined. He suffered a nervous breakdown, while Morton claimed fame for himself in another public and this time successful demonstration with ether in 1846 and is still mistakenly considered the discoverer of anesthesia.
On Morton's order, he traveled to Europe from 1847 to promote his discovery and other anesthetics discovered by Morton, but became addicted to chloroform himself . After splashing acid on two women while intoxicated, Wells ended up in New York's Tombs Prison . Wells committed suicide there by cutting a hamstring vein after using chloroform to make himself less sensitive to pain.
Web links
- Literature by and about Horace Wells in the WorldCat bibliographic database
literature
- Jürgen Thorwald : The century of the surgeon. New edition Knaur, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-426-03275-9 .
- Werner E. Gerabek : Wells, Horace. In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1471.
Individual evidence
- ^ Connecticuthistory
- ↑ Irene Meichsner : Beginning of anesthesia: visionary dentist discovered nitrous oxide as an anesthetic , article in the series calendar sheet of Deutschlandfunk from December 11, 2019
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wells, Horace |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American dentist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 21, 1815 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hartford (Vermont) |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 24, 1848 |
| Place of death | New York City |