The Chloroformist by Christine Ball

Author:Christine Ball
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522877748
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

Laughing Gas

NO-ONE THOUGHT THE Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867 would open on time. The winter had been cold and wet, hampering construction, and by April, the site was still far from ready. In the last few frantic days, 500 extra workmen were employed to ensure everything was in place for the opening ceremony on 1 May.1 On that day, representatives of the royal families of Europe gathered to hear Louis Napoleon III’s opening address and Gioachino Rossini’s new composition ‘Hymn to the Emperor’.

Napoleon was keen to show off—not just the exhibition, but all of Paris, a city he had been remodelling extensively with the help of the architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Over the preceding years, the crowded inner slums of Paris had been cleared away and the royal guests now travelled down wide, expansive boulevards to the carefully laid-out exhibition. There they found many novel features such as waterways, gardens, an amusement park—and, for the first time, national pavilions and restaurants, an eclectic collection of small structures in the grounds surrounding the main exhibition building. There was a Swiss chalet, an Eastern mosque, a Swedish cottage, an English lighthouse, even a number of camels in a carefully constructed stable. Within the main building, the exhibitions ranged from the extravagant to the extraordinary, as French and English paintings, furnishing and clocks competed with a giant Krupp steel cannon and an igloo made of Prussian salt. The American exhibition, housed in the main building, contained an entire field hospital, ‘a complete and rich model of a steam ambulance carriage, containing 60 beds and furnished with every requisite, such as surgical instruments, surgeon’s room, operating table, &c’.2 In an inconspicuous corner of the room was a strange arrangement of pipes and bottles. Closer inspection revealed this to be equipment for the manufacture and storage of nitrous oxide, an anaesthetic gas which had been struggling for over sixty years for recognition.

The American Thomas Wiltberger Evans, Napoleon III’s personal dentist and close friend, curated the American display, with the help of his colleague Dr John W Crane. Evans had lived in Paris for twenty years, originally travelling there at the invitation of another American dentist, Cyrus Brewster.3 Shortly after he arrived in Paris, Evans had been called to urgently treat Louis Napoleon for a problem with one of his teeth. Napoleon had been so impressed by Evans’ gentle technique that he had insisted the American attend to his teeth on a weekly basis, an arrangement that resulted in a lifelong friendship. It was a relationship with many benefits, ultimately making Evans a very rich man. He became a shrewd property investor, aware of Napoleon and Haussmann’s plans for Paris and able to acquire property in areas he knew would subsequently be highly coveted. He also developed a rich and important clientele, treating most of the royalty of Europe over his long career. By 1867, when the exhibition opened, he and his wife were living in the magnificent Bella Rosa, a house they had built on land previously used for farming, adjacent to the newly developed Bois de Boulogne.

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