Horace Wells was a dentist in New England in the 1800's. At that time, nitrous oxide was commonly used at parties for entertainment purposes. After witnessing an intoxicated party guest hit his shin on a bench, cutting it open, with no pain, Horace decided it would be useful as a method of pain control in his practice. In order to test his theory, he had a colleague extract one of his teeth while under the influence of nitrous, and was pleased to find it was done painlessly. He continued to use it in his office, and decided to demonstrate it's usefullnes before a group of physicians and medical students. Now keep in mind that nitrous at that time was used as a general anesthetic, not as a means of sedation like today, so patients were taken much deeper. There are several "planes" of general anesthesia, and one plane is an excitement phase, just prior to total loss of consciousness. In Horace's demonstration, he was a bit nervous and actually didn't take his patient deep enough, so despite the fact that the patient felt no pain, he thrashed around a bit and Horace was accused of being a fraud by his medical colleagues. He was distraught and slipped into drug abuse. He took to wandering the streets, throwing acid on the clothing of prostitutes and following them until their clothes fell off. He was arrested and sent to prison. Depressed and embarrassed, he committed suicide. Much later, he was credited with being the father of general anesthesia, a distinction he never appreciated.
