WELLS, Horace, dentist, born in Hartford, Vermont, 21 January, 1815; died in New York city, 24 January, 1848. He was educated at New England academies, and in 1834 began the study of dentistry in Boston. In 1836 he opened an office in Hartford, Connecticut, where he soon gained a lucrative practice. His attention was early turned to the desirability of preventing pain during the extraction of teeth. After unsuccessfully experimenting with various narcotics he expressed his belief in the efficacy of nitrous oxide in 1840 ; but it was not until 1844, when that a agent had been administered publicly in Hartford to several persons by Dr. Gardiner Q. Colton in his lecture on laughing-gas, that he became convinced of the practicability of its use. On the following day, 11 December, 1844, he had a tooth extracted from his own mouth without experiencing any pain while under the influence of the gas, and he at once began to use it in the extraction of teeth from other persons. Subsequently other dentists in Hartford became convinced of its value and used it. He went to Boston in January, 1845, for the purpose of laying his discovery more prominently before the profession, and communicated his experience to Dr. William T. G. Morton, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, and Dr. John C. Warren. Dr. Warren invited him to lecture before his class at the Harvard medical school and to administer the gas to a patient ; but the experiment failed, as the subject was only partially anaesthetized, and in consequence Mr. Wells was hissed by the students, who pronounced him a charlatan and his gas a humbug. Dr. Morton had been his pupil in Hartford, and by his aid established himself in Boston. Subsequently, when he and Dr. Jackson laid claim to the discovery of anaesthesia and in 1846 applied for a patent, Mr. Wells remonstrated, stating the results of his own experiments and introducing the testimony of the medical profession in Hartford; but to no avail, for a patent was issued to Dr. Morton in November, 1846. Later, when Dr. Jackson and Dr. Morton submitted their claims to the Institute of France, Mr. Wells at once sailed for Europe in order to present his statement before that body also; but without success. He removed to New York city in 1847, where he tried to impress on the community the validity of his discovery Mr. Wells was arrested on a charge of throwing vitriol on the clothes of women in the street, and this so aggravated a mental disorder with which he had been attacked that he committed suicide He published a pamphlet entitled "A History of the Application of Nitrous-Oxide Gas, Ether, and other Vapors to Surgical Operations" (1847). A bronze statue by Truman H. Bartlett has been erected to his memory by the citizens of Hartford in Bushnell park. Charles T. Jackson, Crawford W. Long, William T. G. Morton, and Horace Wells are the claimants for the discovery of amesthesia See "An Examination of the Question of Amesthesia" (Boston, 1859) and "An Inquiry into the Orb gin of Modern Anaesthesia" (Hartford, 1867).