At the time the controversy between Jackson and Morton was going on, Horace Wells, a dentist in Hartford, made a claim that prior to the use of ether he had used in his profession nitrous oxide gas to prevent pain. In the autumn of 1846 he went to Europe to lay his discovery before the medical profession in Paris, and in March, 1847, on his return, he was my fellow passenger on board the steamship Hibernia, and shared my stateroom. He was a landsman, unfamiliar with the sea, and easily frightened by the noises of the ship. He was especially frightened on a dark night in a northwest gale surrounded by broken ice off the Flemish cap, the northeast edge of the grand banks. As we entered the field ice Capt. Harrison deemed it prudent to stand to the southward and escape it. We were constantly feeling the huge blocks of ice, thumping against us, and with the windows of the dining saloon which was on the main deck, well shuttered, it was about as dismal a prospect as passengers not yet fully satisfied of the seaworthiness of sidewheel ocean steamships had ever experienced. In those days the trumpet was used by the officers on the deck in giving orders at night or in a storm to the men at the wheel, and about ten o’clock the few of us who were not sick, sitting in the saloon, heard the order, “hard a port.” Of course we ran to the door, but before reaching it heard the order, “hard a starboard.” I saw on the port side perhaps a quarter of a mile distant the glisten of an iceberg, and those on the starboard side saw the glisten of another about the same distance away, and as we went wallowing along in the trough of the sea we sailed between them. We turned in soon after, but there was not much sleep for the poor Doctor after the fright he had received. About midnight we were awakened by the crash on our decks of a gigantic wave, which enveloped the ship, filling the dining saloon sill deep, and pouring down into the cabin, endangering the lives of several passengers whose stateroom doors were broken open, and who were washed out of their berths. The Doctor was out and off in an instant, returning in about ten minutes telling me to get up as the ship was sinking. As I never was easily rattled, I remained in my berth, either taking no stock in his outcry, or thinking that a speedy death in my stateroom would be better than a lingering one among floating cakes of ice. In the morning we were clear of the ice, and once more on our course. The troubles to which Dr. Wells was subjected in endeavoring to substantiate his claim, affected his brain, and he committed suicide in New York, January 24, 1848. A statue has been erected to his memory in the park at Hartford, his native city.