Happy Little Accidents: anesthesia

Penicillin, sticky notes, super glue, microwaves, velcro, potato chips, and anesthesia—modern society is not only familiar with but has benefited immensely from many of these groundbreaking scientific inventions. Besides this, they don’t appear to have any direct relationship, right? Wrong. Every single one of these discoveries is the result of a happy little accident, an experiment that resulted in innovation that was neither predicted nor purposeful. However, regardless of their silly origin stories, their significance and lasting impact on humanity is undeniable. Years of tests and quizzes in science class have often misled students to believe that mistakes are something to be avoided at all costs, when in reality they can often provide valuable insights. Overall, this column will explore how even the most catastrophic failures can become science’s greatest triumphs. 

The history of anesthesia is particularly interesting. Anesthesia plays a crucial role in modern-day surgery to prevent pain or discomfort. Prior to the 19th century, patients would often be given opium or narcotics for surgery, which frequently caused serious side effects and were inefficient. Even hypnosis was used in an attempt to guide people into a trance-like state in an effort to numb the pain. Naturally, the desire for a successful and dependable method of rendering patients unconscious safely in medical procedures has existed approximately as early as 4000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. 

In 1772, Joseph Priestly, an English chemist and natural philosopher, synthesized nitrous oxide by heating nitric acid soaked iron fillings. He had believed it to be an “air” and did not conduct any further experiments. By the early 19th century, the inhalation of nitrous oxide for euphoric purposes became a popular pastime for college students and elite members of British high society who participated in said activities at their so called “laughing gas parties.” Other nicknames for the compound were “intoxicating gas” and “gas of Paradise.” This recreational use of the gas was said to send people into fits of laughter, hence the name. 

At around the same time in 1798, English physician and philosopher Thomas Beddoes established the “Pneumatic Institution for Relieving Diseases by Medical Airs” in Bristol, England. He investigated the potential for gases to provide therapeutic services in order to treat respiratory ailments such as tuberculosis, a disease running rampant at this time in history. Beddoes hired young Humphrey Davy as superintendent; Davy performed many experiments at the institution including the use of nitrous oxide. Despite Davy’s publication of his findings involving nitrous oxide in “Researches, Chemical, and Philosophical,” not much attention was brought to his work and the gas’s potential uses in the evolving medical field. Nevertheless, Davy himself participated in using the gas for leisure, inviting friends like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey to take turns inhaling the nitrous oxide from bladders; consequently, they would collapse in their sudden hilarity. According to WIRED, Coleridge described the gas as “an highly pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole frame, resembling what I remember once to have experienced after returning from a walk in the snow into a warm room.”

The popularity of laughing gas in parties and exhibitions only continued to grow, spreading in the United States even though its medical potential had not yet been realized by the masses. On December 10, 1844, Horace Wells, a dentist from Hartford, Connecticut, was at a laughing gas performance where a man named Sam Cooley was a participant. Despite hurting his leg during the course of the show, Cooley, as noted by Wells, did not appear to be in any pain, leading Wells to consider the medical implications of the gas. He investigated the matter by performing a wisdom tooth extraction on himself under the influence of nitrous oxide and found that he experienced no suffering or torment. Wells was certainly not the only person to spread information about these conclusions, but rather was part of a larger process taking place as the gas’s capabilities gradually became common knowledge in the world of medicine.

While many people understand the importance and prominence of anesthesia today in life-saving medical procedures, it is a lesser known fact that its humble beginnings were associated with frolicsome partying and high-class leisure.