Don't you hate it when you squirt Redi-Whip into your mouth

Nitrous oxide, or "laughing gas," was in use at the turn of the nineteenth century, mostly for entertainment purposes. Ether, too, was for decades no more than a diversion; Fenster notes that by the 1830s, teenagers gathered in living rooms for "ether follies," giddy with the inebriation ether could produce. Although doctors and scientists had begun to recognize the possible value of nitrous oxide and ether as painkillers, those who spoke out were scoffed at by a society that believed adamantly that operations would always be painful.

But in 1844, dentist Horace Wells attended an exhibition in Hartford where the use of nitrous oxide was demonstrated and a lungful was offered to anyone who would come onto the stage. Wells tried the gas, but more importantly, he noticed that another man on stage had lacerated a knee but was feeling no pain. The next morning, Wells administered nitrous oxide to himself and a colleague extracted one of Wells' teeth. Wells came back to his senses, felt the hole where his tooth had been and realized that he had revolutionized dentistry.