GARDNER QUINCY COLTON'S 1848 VISIT TO MOBILE, ALABAMA

A.J. Wright, M.L.S.
Department of Anesthesiology Library
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Public demonstrations of nitrous oxide inhalation had a rich history in Great Britain and the U.S. in the first half of the nineteenth century---and a long pedigree as well. In eighteenth century Great Britain peripatetic lecturers offered a combination of amusement and instruction in communities large and small on topics ranging from electricity to chemistry. (1-2) By the late 1700s Priesley's "factitious airs" or gases were included in such presentations; and nitrous oxide's effects were soon added as the 1799 and 1800 experiments by Beddoes' group in Bristol became known. Over the next few decades numerous lecturers in classrooms and on the touring circuits added the gas to their demonstrations. (3) Laughing gas demonstrations during this period can be viewed variously as objects of satiritcal and political attack (4); along with information in textbooks as a means of knowledge transmission about the effects of the gas; (3,5); or, as "...the laughing gas performances suggest a collective ambivalence toward the role of irrational passions amid expanding democracy and advancing capitalism, they also demonstrate how new forms of commercial entertainment reinforced the parameters of middle-class respectability."(6)

Perhaps the best known gas demonstrator in the United States was Gardner Quincy Colton (1814-1898). After two years of medical study in New York, Colton left school in 1844 before receiving a degree to "throw physic to the dogs." (7) He began a career as public lecturer on chemistry, natural philosophy, and the telegraph that lasted until 1849, when Colton joined his brother Walter who had been appointed Civil Governor of California. In addition to his New England tours that included the famous demonstration in December, 1844, attended by Horace Wells, Colton visited cities in the Midwest and South: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Mobile, Alabama. (6)

After a stay in New Orleans, Colton began his lecture series in Mobile on Friday, March 10, 1848, and seems to have continued well into April. His presentations were multi-media extravaganzas that began at Franklin Hall on St. Joseph Street and then moved to a bigger hall, The Alhambra, on South Royal Street. The program often included an exhibition of "The Court of Death," a huge painting by Rembrandt Peale that stood 13 feet high and stretched 24 feet in length. Colton demonstrated how the telegraph worked in addition to the effects of laughing gas. Cost for admission was 25 cents or 10 cents for children with adults. Colton's appearances were apparently so popular that he offered on Monday, April 13, "...the ladies a free exhibition of the laughing gas...." at 3 p.m.

As a fascinating coda to Colton's visit, Robert H. Collyer brought his "Model Artistes" show to Mobile in early April. This exhibition consisted of live actors recreating paintings and sculptures by such artists as Titian, Raphael, and Rubens. (9) Collyer was an Englishman who in the 1830s had studied mesmerism under Elliotson, phrenology under Spurzheim, and whose life story is as fascinating as Colton's. (10) He was also a minor claimant to having discovered anesthesia. (11)

This paper will examine in detail a lecture series in a single city by Gardner Quincy Colton, master showman and an important figure in the history of nitrous oxide anesthesia.

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2. Gibbs FW. Itinerant lecturers in natural philosophy. Ambix 7:111-117, 1960

3. Wright AJ. Public demonstrations of nitrous oxide, 1799-1844. Anesthesia History Association annual meeting, Buffalo, New York, May, 1996

4. Wright AJ. "I fill three quarters of immensity!" Satires of early nitrous oxide research. Bull Anesth Hist 14(1):15-18, January 1996

5. Wright AJ. The sleeping gas: nitrous oxide in medical and chemistry textbooks, 1800-1844. Anesthesiology 83:A1017, 1995

6. Grayson EH. Social order and psychological disorder: laughing gas demonstrations, 1800-1850. In: Thomson RG, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraoridinary Body. New York University Press, 1996, pp 108-120

7. Smith GB, Hirsch NP. Gardner Quincy Colton: pioneer of nitrous oxide anesthesia. Anesth Analg 72:382-391, 1991

8. Mobile [Alabama] Register and Journal, April 1, 1848, p.2

9. Mobile [Alabama] Register and Journal, April 10, 1848, p. 2

10. Stoehr T. Robert H. Collyer's technology of the soul. In: Wrobel A, ed. Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987, pp 21-45

11. Kandela P. Pain-free surgery. Lancet 352:1159, 1998