Sedation in Dentistry Began with a Compassionate Family Dentist

Because we enjoy the many gifts of a technologically advanced society, it is almost impossible to comprehend a time when General Dentistry and the care of teeth seemed to amount to little more than butchery. But less than 150 years ago, the emerging practice of dentistry was struggling because family dentists did not have a way to extract teeth, prevent infection and remove decay without causing considerable pain to their patients.

Horace Wells’ Search for Anxiety Free Dentistry

A compassionate dentist named Horace Wells was so troubled by his inability to solve his patients’ problems without causing them pain that he was considering giving up the field altogether, until he saw a demonstration, by an entertainer, of the affects of nitrous oxide gas in 1844. While the man he saw was intoxicated, not sedated, Wells immediately saw the possibilities of Conscious Sedation. Wells sought to perfect a nitrous oxide sedation method in which he could anesthetize patients without causing pain and anxiety, and thus surgical anesthesia was invented by a Family Dentist.

Wells demonstrated his nitrous oxide sedation method, after much experimentation, at Massachusetts General Hospital in January of 1845, but his patient proved unresponsive to the gas. A short time later William Thomas Green Morton demonstrated a different sedation dentistry technique with ether, and because Wells’ first demonstration was unsuccessful, there was some controversy over who was responsible for the discovery. However, in 1964 and 1870, the American Dental Association and the American Medical Association, respectively, voted in Wells’ favor, and Wells has been known as the father of surgical anesthesia, and of sedation dentistry, ever since.

The Latest Technique in Sedation Dentistry - IV Sedation

Now at Stanley Dentistry we offer IV Sedation dentistry, an advanced surgical anesthetic technique in which the only pain you may experience is the tiny pinprick of an intravenous needle. Your dental procedure will take place in a safe, warm, anxiety-free dentistry environment, without pain or trauma. If Horace Wells were alive today, he would be extraordinarily pleased at how far we have come in the care of teeth since the days of the nitrous oxide gas tank.

Sources: Horace Wells. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 08, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online; Horace Wells. In General Anaesthesia. Retrieved November 08, 2008, from BLTC Research.