Horace Wells, an American dentist, one of the claimants of the discovery of anaesthesia, born in Hartford, Windsor co., Vt., Jan. 21, 1815, died in New York, Jan. 24, 1848. In 1834-6 he studied and practised dentistry in Boston, and in 1836 opened an office in Hartford, Conn. Early in his practice he had considered the possibility of administering some anaesthetic to prevent pain in dental operations, and in 1840 the use of nitrous oxide gas occurred to him. On Dec. 10, 1844, Mr. G. Q. Colton lectured in Hartford and administered nitrous oxide gas to several persons, one of whom under its influence bruised himself severely by falling over some benches, but was unconscious of pain. Dr. Wells at once declared his belief "that a man, by taking that gas, could have a tooth extracted or a limb amputated, and not feel the pain." The next day he tested the matter in his own person, having a large molar tooth extracted without the slightest pain. He followed this by the successful administration of the gas in 12 or 15 cases of extraction of teeth during the autumn of 1844, and other dentists of the city successfully administered it in their practice.

In December, 1844, he made known his discovery to Drs. Warren and Hayward, the distinguished chemist Dr. C. T. Jackson, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, a dentist and a former pupil of his, and others in Boston. Dr. Warren invited him to address his medical class, but he was too diffident to make a very satisfactory impression. He extracted a tooth for a patient under anaesthetic influence in the presence of the medical class; but the experiment was not sufficiently successful to excite much interest in the subject. In October, 1846, when Dr. Morton applied for a patent (which he obtained in November) for anaasthetic agents, Dr. Wells remonstrated, stated the results of his own experiments, and adduced the testimony of the surgeons and physicians of Hartford to their success. In December of the same year he sailed for France, to lay his discovery before the medical profession, and succeeded in convincing the medical society of Paris that he had made a valuable discovery. In the spring of 1847 he returned to America, and on March 30 published a pamphlet entitled "A History of the Discovery of the Application of Nitrous Oxide Gas, Ether, and other Vapors to Surgical Operations," in which he stated the results of his experiments as above related, and sustained them by several affidavits.

The controversy which followed impaired his already enfeebled health, and, with his experiments on himself of the effects of chloroform, produced mental aberration. He had removed to New York, where he was arrested on a charge of throwing vitriol on the clothes of women in the street; and this causing an aggravation of his mental disorder, he committed suicide. In 1853, when an amendment to the congressional appropriation bill was offered providing for a grant of $100,000 to the "discoverer of practical anaesthesia," a report giving evidence in regard to Dr. Wells's claims was presented by Senator Truman Smith, who published it under the title of "An Examination of the Question of Anaesthesia" (Boston, 1859), and also "An Inquiry into the Origin of Modern Anaesthesia" (Hartford, 1867). A memorial statue of Wells has been erected in the public park of Hartford, Conn. (See AnAesthetics; Jackson, Chables Thomas; and Moeton, William Thomas Gbeen).