Posts Tagged ‘laughing gas’
Fighting the Law of Gravity…
From the good folks at 2D House, a wonderfully-loony look at what would happen if Rube Goldberg took on Isaac Newton…
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As we reconsider our options, we might recall that it was on this date in 1844 that “painless dentistry” was born. The previous day, Dr. Horace Wells had attended a demonstration of the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide gas, conducted by a travelling lecturer, Gardner Quincy Colton. At that demo, Wells noticed that a man under the influence of the “laughing gas” cut his leg, but claimed to feel no pain. To test the potential of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic, Wells was his own guinea pig; he arranged for Colton to administer nitrous oxide to him, then had one of his associates (Dr. John M. Riggs) extract one of his teeth.
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