Horace Wells made the one-hundred-mile trip to Boston, relying upon a
former partner to make an introduction to the medical leaders of the city.
Wells had previously been in a dental partnership in Hartford with
William Thomas Green Morton (1819–1868), and while it was short-lived
(1842–1843), they apparently had parted under amicable terms. Morton
arranged a meeting with John Collins Warren, the head of surgery at MGH
in February 1845, just two months after Wells had started using laughing
gas to perform dental procedures.
The excitement of going to Boston, mingling with the top surgical
figures in America, and demonstrating his technique to the medical
students at Harvard, quickly faded to embarrassment and shame. Wells had
been invited to administer nitrous oxide to a patient who needed a limb
amputation, but after vainly waiting days for the patient to agree (who can
blame the patient?), it was proposed that Wells oversee the administration
of gas for a tooth extraction. In some ways this was likely a relief for
Wells, and by treading familiar territory of dental anesthesia as opposed to
major limb surgery, he had to feel sanguine on that late winter day.
Instead, catastrophe occurred. Wells later recalled, “Accordingly a large
number of students, with several physicians, met to see the operation
performed—one of their number to be the patient. Unfortunately for the
experiment, the gas bag was by mistake withdrawn much too soon, and he
was but partially under its influence when the tooth was extracted. He
testified that he experienced some pain, but not as much as usually attends
the operation. As there were no other patient [sic] present, that the
experiment might be repeated, and as several expressed their opinion that
it was a humbug affair (which is in fact all the thanks that I got for this
gratuitous service), I accordingly left the next morning for home.”^15
Humiliated, Horace Wells left Boston, but not before meeting with
William Morton and Morton’s Harvard chemistry professor, Charles
Jackson. While Morton’s demonstration had been a failure, the meeting
among the three would prove to be the genesis behind the use of ether.
Morton was a native of Massachusetts, and had earlier attended the
Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, the first dental school in the world
(prior to this, dentistry was similar to early surgery, where the
apprenticeship model was used). It is debated if Morton actually graduated
from dental school,^16 ,^17 but he returned to New England and briefly
partnered with Wells.