Nitrous Oxide History

Nitrous Oxide has been used as an analgesic and anesthetic for over 100 years. Nitrous oxide was probably first produced by the English chemist and physicist Robert Boyle. He found that Nitrous Oxide could be used as a painkiller. During the Victorian period in England, members of the upper class often held laughing gas parties at which people gathered to inhale nitrous oxide as a recreational drug, rather than for any therapeutic purpose. in the United States, the showman P. T. Barnum created a sideshow exhibit in which people were invited to test the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide. After seeing a demonstration of this kind, the American dentist Horace Wells (1815–1848) first used nitrous oxide as an anesthetic on his patients. In 1868, American surgeon Edmund Andrews was the first to use Nitrous Oxide as a surgeon by mixing it with oxygen so that patients still have enough oxygen to breathe. The gas is still widely used by dentists as a safe and relatively pleasant way of helping patients endure the discomfort of drilling and other dental procedures.