Humphry Davy: his life, works, and contribution to anesthesiology.

H ISTORY offers us a tool to avoid the condemnation George Santayana (1863–1952) envisioned for those who forget the past. In studying the history of anesthesia, and in particular the singular events that brought anesthesia into the consciousness of the world in Boston in 1845 and 1846, we find much to admire, but even more that we might hope not to repeat. The first public demonstrations of anesthesia, by Horace Wells (1815–1848) in 1845 and William T. G. Morton (1819–1868) in 1846, initially capture the imagination with their daring audacity. We can picture Wells’ shame and astonishment as his patient cried out during the ill-fated tooth extraction under nitrous oxide anesthesia, much as we can hear John Collins Warren (1778–1856, professor of anatomy and surgery and first dean of Harvard Medical School), proclaiming less than 2 yr later: “Gentlemen, this is no humbug” after Morton’s more successful demonstration of ether anesthesia. But these promising beginnings yield unhappy sequels, and our enthusiasm wanes as we learn of Morton’s penchant for fraud, embezzlement, and self-promotion and Wells’ imprisonment and eventual suicide in the Tombs penitentiary. Implicit in our disappointment is a desire, perhaps, to find among the founders of our profession a model figure, a person whose efforts foresaw anesthesia not only as a spectacular discovery and potential source of profit but also as a science founded on pharmacologic and physiologic inquiry. We are looking, in short, for Humphry Davy. Some readers may be familiar with Davy’s work and will recognize his life as a natural topic for discussion of the history of anesthesia. Others may harbor vague and generally unpleasant recollections of Davy in association with an undergraduate chemistry course. But few would identify Davy as a founder of the science of anesthesiology. The goal of this article is, however, nothing less than to demonstrate that the title of first anesthesiologist belongs not to the likes of Morton or Wells but to Humphry Davy. In recounting the events of Davy’s life, we will chart the spectacular ascendancy of a man who rose from humble origins in provincial England to become the foremost scientist in Europe or indeed the world at the time; a man who despite being almost entirely self-educated, would contribute six elements to the periodic table and whose inventions would revolutionize coal mining, agriculture, and art conservation; who would participate in the romantic literary movement; whose public lectures would draw ecstatic crowds of thousands; who would rise through the ranks of the British nobility; who would cross the blockaded English channel at the very height of the Napoleonic wars to consult with colleagues on the European continent; a man of rare and prodigious genius: Humphry Davy.