Horace Wells began the study of dentistry in 1834, in Boston, and later opened an office in Hartford, Connecticut. He seems to have been a young man of great ingenuity, continually making new instruments and devising new experiments. To him is to be credited the first operation ever performed without pain by the use of nitrous-oxide gas. In 1844 a Dr. Colton delivered a lecture in Hartford upon the subject of this gas. A young man who inhaled it, and became excited, ran against some furniture, badly bruising himself, but made no complaint of pain. Wells, noticing this, said to a by-stander that he believed that one, by inhaling a sufficient quantity, could have a tooth extracted or a leg amputated without pain. The following day he inhaled the gas himself and had a tooth extracted by a Dr. Higgs. Wells remained unconscious for a little while, and, on recovering consciousness, cried out: "A new era in tooth-pulling! It did not hurt me as much as the prick of a pin! It is the greatest discovery ever made!" He at once began the manufacture and use of the gas, which became quite general in that locality. His attention was also called to the action of the vapor of ether, which Dr. Marcy, a physician of Hartford, suggested to him to try as a substitute for gas; but Wells, finding it more difficult to administer, discontinued it and confined himself to the use of nitrous oxide. A month later Dr. Marcy gave{306} ether to a sailor for a small operation, the man feeling no pain. These experiences of Wells and Marcy occurred two years after Long's work with ether, each being in total ignorance of the experiments of the other. In 1845 Wells visited Boston for the purpose of introducing nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic, and called upon his fellow-dentist and old partner, Morton, among others. He was discouraged, with his lack of success, returned to Hartford, and continued the frequent use of gas for a couple of years longer, but met with no encouragement in introducing it for general surgical purposes, on account of prejudice and fear upon the part of physicians and surgeons. Wells died in January, 1848, a few days before the Medical Society of Paris passed a resolution that to him is due all the honor of having first discovered and successfully applied the use of vapors or gases whereby surgical operations could be performed without pain. There stands to-day in Hartford the monument erected by the city and the State, with the following inscription:-- "Horace Wells, who discovered anæsthesia, November, 1844."