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 of several of the foremost surgeons of the city and of a body of medical students. The patient slept quietly while the surgeon's knife was plied, and awoke to astonished comprehension that the ordeal was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had been accomplished.(5)