The Opelousas courier., 1898-12-03
A FAMOUS DENTIST.
The Late. GO. Cotton First Used "Laush-
.."[5 = Ing Gas. in Practice.

- FTTS~t~ 'I- =
+-=%T ing Gas't in Practice.
DIR. Gardner Quincy Cotton, late Of
New York city, to. whom belongs in
part the credit of a~nesthesia by laugh
ing gas, died recently III Rotterdam at
i The age of 81. Besides being It dem
tist, DIR. Cotton was a physician, a lee
turer, a critic, an electrician and at one
time a gold prospector, having gone to
California with the ~argonauts Of 40,
both to search for gold and to practise
medicine among his fellow adventlr-
ers. There is good ground for the be-
lief that he invented the first electric
motor ever run, but it never got be-
You'd the model state, though the little
machine which he built worked per-
fectly.
Born in Vermont, the twelfth child
Of poor parents. he was able to get
| only q omnon school education before
being set to the trade Of chalrmaklnE'
/ All his spare moments were given 10
reading and study and with Sch
city at the age of y, nhded
considerably to his can by writing
for the newspapers, until he had saved
enough money to achieve the first great
ambition of his life, a curse in the
| College of Physicians aud Surgeons.
+ After graduation he studied in the CT
flee of DR.. William Parker and two
years later set out upon a lecture
tour, speaking on philosophical and
chemical subjects. His ~favorlte lee
ture was one dealing with electrical
phenomena and the peculiar effects
upon the brain of nitrous oxide gas,
which he called laughing gas because
of ridiculous performances OF persons
under it's influence. These lectures
he supplemented by experiments. IN
1914 he lectured in Hartford, and
among those on the stage was DR..
Horace Wells. A young man having
inhaled nitrous oxide gas barked his
shins upon a chair, but felt no pain
until the effects of the gas wore Off.
This struck DR.. Wells so forcibly that
he determined to have a tooth out
while under the influence of the gas,
and the experiment was SO successful
that he published the result of it.
For q long time other dentists scoffed
at it, but when its efficacy was proved
beyond doubt two other physicians,
Morton and Jackson, put forth claims
to the discovery which was to render
painless the most distressing form Of
dentistry. The controversy which
followed was bitter in its progress and
tragic in it's end, for it drove Drs.
h Wells and Morton to suicide and Dr..
Jackson to an insane asylum. There
after the use of nitrous oxide fell
away, but DR.. Cotton revived it ONE
years later, giving full credit for the
discovery to DR.. Wells.
In 1S4S, to illustrate the practica-
bility of electricity as a motive power,
DIR. Cotton built a small electrical To-
connective, which drew a train of toy
cars around a circular track. This
was put away when the inventor went
west in 1S49 and never resurrected
until years afterward. In an impor-
tant patent suit the doctor was called
as a witness and ished it out Of an old
trunk where it had been for about 40
years. With a little tinkering it ran
as well as ever Dr.. Colton's testi-
mony had a vital effect upon the case
on trial, and photographs of the model
were taken and are now in the Smith
sonian institution in Washington. As
a gold digger DR.. Cotton was a moder-
ate success only, but as n of the very
few physicians among the argonauts
he made a good thing out of his ven
ture. In 1850 Governor Riley ap-
pointed him the first justice of the
peace in California. Returning east
shortly after he resumed his lecture
tours, and early in the Civil war he
got out the Cotton wal maps. In 1868
he established the Cotton Dental as
ISOLATION, and it is said that he and
his assistants have pulled from the
painful mouths of sufferers more than
a million undesirable teeth. DR.. Col
ton pttBfiisf1ed many pamphlets upon
literary, philosophical aud theological
subjects, THE best known Of which Is
his manoge d u ssa1a,hl1 on Shakespeare and
the BibEe." He left large fortune.