The inhalation of gases to relieve pain during surgery is considered one of America’s greatest contributions to medicine. The “discovery” of anesthesia is often credited to Boston dentist William Morton, who brought an inhalation device and ether into the operating room of Dr. John Collins Warren one October morning in 1846. Within a year use of ether anesthesia for surgical pain relief had spread throughout the U.S., Britain, France, and many other countries. Yet Thomas Beddoes and Humphry Davy experimented with nitrous oxide as early as 1799 and Davy noted himself that it could be used to destroy surgical pain. Why didn’t they pursue it? And what might have happened if they had?
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