Abby Connolly
As it turns out, nitrous oxide doesn’t work as well on people who are obese or drink lots of alcohol, and the demonstration patient was both.
Unfortunately, this discovery was not made until later, and the audience ridiculed Horace for his failed demonstration. Horace gave up his dental practice after this demonstration and continued working with anesthesia.
Horace worked with Dr. William Morton to create ether anesthesia but received hardly any credit for his work. During this time, he wrote to the Academie Royale de Medicine and the Parisian Medical Society in Paris, France, to ask that he receive credit for the discovery of anesthesia.
Becoming increasingly discouraged, Horace began experimenting with chloroform in the late 1840s and eventually became addicted to it.
He left his family and moved to New York City in 1848, where he threw acid on a woman in the streets on his 33rd birthday while under the influence of chloroform. He was arrested, and while being escorted to prison, his high started wearing off, and he realized the harm he had caused.
Horace asked the officers who arrested him if he could go to his house to retrieve his shaving kit before going to prison. He took his own life one night while in his cell and was found the next morning.
His story is tragic, especially because the Parisian Medical Society honored his request and named him the first to perform operations without pain twelve days before his death. Horace never found out. Years after his death, The American Dental Association and the American Medical Association recognized his work and discoveries with anesthesia in 1864 and 1870. Finally, he got the honors he deserved.
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