bandoned--that the surgeon's knife must ever remain a synonym
for slow and indescribable torture. By an odd coincidence it chanced
that Sir Benjamin Brodie, the acknowledged leader of English surgeons,
had publicly expressed this as his deliberate though regretted opinion
at a time when the quest which he considered futile had already led to
the most brilliant success in America, and while the announcement of
the discovery, which then had no transatlantic cable to convey it, was
actually on its way to the Old World.

The American dentist just referred to, who was, with one exception to
be noted presently, the first man in the world to conceive that the
administration of a definite drug might render a surgical operation
painless and to give the belief application was Dr. Horace Wells, of
Hartford, Connecticut. The drug with which he experimented was nitrous
oxide--the same that Davy had used; the operation that he rendered
painless was no more important than the extraction of a tooth--yet it
sufficed to mark a principle; the year of the experiment was 1844.

The experiments of Dr. Wells, however, though important, were not
sufficiently demonstrative to bring the matter prominently to the
attention of the medical world. The drug with which he experimented
proved not always reliable, and he himself seems ultimately to have
given the matter up, or at least to have relaxed his efforts.
But meantime a friend, to whom he had communicated his belief and
expectations, took the matter up, and with unremitting zeal carried
forward experiments that were destined to lead to more tangible results.
This friend was another dentist, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, then a
young man full of youthful energy and enthusiasm. He seems to have
felt that the drug with which Wells had experimented was not the
most practicable one for the purpose, and so for several months
he experimented with other allied drugs, until finally he hit upon
sulphuric ether, and with this was able to make experiments upon
animals, and then upon patients in the dental chair, that seemed to him
absolutely demonstrative.

Full of eager enthusiasm, and absolutely confident of his results, he at
once went to Dr. J. C. Warren, one of the foremost surgeons of Boston,
and asked permission to test his discovery decisively on one of the
patients at the Boston Hospital during a severe operation. The request
was granted; the test was made on October 16, 1846, in the presence