The Smile Stealers: The Fine and Foul Art of Dentistry by Richard Barnett

Author:Richard Barnett [Barnett, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
Published: 2017-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

THE FLOOR, HE WENT FOR WELLS, BENT ON REVENgE FOR THE HOAX THAT HAD BEEN PLAYED ON HIM. AND THE AUDIENCE FOLLOWED SUIT. ‘HUMBUg, SWINDLE,’ THEY SHOUTED, ‘THROW HIM OUT. THIS IS A UNIVERSITY AND NOT A CIRCUS.’ This episode – which effectively ended Wells’ career as a dentist – illustrates the main difficulty facing all early experiments with nitrous oxide. The success of the frolics had been built on the unpredictable and raucous effects of laughinggas in those who breathed it, and this made dosage extremely hard to estimate – particularly when the gas was administered from a large rubber bag. The major breakthrough in dental anaesthesia came when Morton began to experiment with a different substance. In 1844 he had attended lectures given by the physician Charles Thomas Jackson at Harvard Medical School. Jackson had demonstrated the power of ether to cause unconsciousness and was also in the habit of using drops of ether to numb the pain of toothache. Borrowing this idea, Morton convinced one of his patients, Eban Frost, that ether was a better bet than mesmerism for a painless extraction. On the evening of 30 September 1846, Morton asked Frost to breathe ether vapour from a silk handkerchief. In a testimonial, the patient recalled that after a minute or so he was ‘lost in sleep’, but ‘in an instant more I woke and saw my tooth lying on the floor. I did not experience the slightest pain whatsoever.’ Morton moved quickly to secure his claim to the proceeds from ether anaesthesia. He and Jackson filed a patent, and he entered a lucrative new partnership with the dentist Nathan Cooley Keep, offering painless extractions to the people of Boston. By the end of the year, Morton had received his patent, and news of his discovery rang around the world. In London the American physician Francis Boott received a letter from a friend, Jacob Bigelow, who had witnessed Morton’s demonstration. Boott passed the description to his neighbour, society dentist James Robinson, and on 19 December Robinson carried out the first British general anaesthetic, pulling a decayed molar from the jaw of one Miss Lonsdale. Although Morton was successful in obtaining credit for the discovery of ether, his attempt to make a fortune from it proved fruitless. Many surgeons opposed his patent, arguing that they should be ① Portrait of Joseph Clover preparing his chloroform inhaler (c. 1862). ② An early inhaler for ether anaesthesia (1847–48). Ether-soaked sponges were placed in the glass jar and flexible tubing connected the valve to the face mask so the patient could inhale the gas. ③ One of the first operations to use ether as an anaesthetic agent, performed at the Massachussetts general Hospital. Daguerrotype (1897). Smile_Stealers_pp1-247.indd 162 24/11/2016 18:0

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