A.J. Wright, MLS
Nitrous oxide became the means for public and private entertainment even before it escaped from the laboratory work done by Humphry Davy at the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, England. Davy started research at Thomas Beddoes Institute in late 1798. The investigators hoped to find treatments for diseases such as tuberculosis, which appeared increasingly as Britain became industrialized. Davy began a series of experiments with different gases, almost killing himself in the process. But he did come across nitrous oxide.
Patients were treated at the Pneumatic Institute, but the place also became a nexus for local celebrities to come and try nitrous oxide inhalation for themselves or to watch people who did. Hilarity and much comment ensued. Before the work ended in 1801, the parade included publisher Joseph Cottle; novelist Maria Edgeworth; Rev. Rochemont Barbauld and his wife Ann a, a writer; and poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Recent medical school graduate Peter Mark Roget worked in that laboratory long before he started his thesaurus.
Thus, nitrous oxide entered the culture simultaneously as a source of clinical work and for entertainment (Image 1). Over the next several decades, the latter use dominated even in chemistry classrooms. Laughing gas “exhibitions” were included in the programs of numerous itinerant lecturers in both America and Great Britain (Image 2). Samuel Colt raised money for development of his revolver in this way. Gardner Quincy Colton, who introduced Horace Wells to nitrous oxide, continued such demonstrations into the late 1840s.
Gas at the Movies
This form of entertainment seems to have mostly disappeared from classrooms and public halls on both sides of the Atlantic by mid-century. The appearance of motion pictures in the 1890s provided a new venue for its rebirth.
The earliest examples I have found are two films released in 1907 by the same title, one from Vitagraph Studios (Image 3). Later that same year, a nine-minute silent short was released and also called “Laughing Gas.” That one was co-directed by Edwin S. Porter, a giant of early American movies who worked for Thomas Edison’s film studio and the Famous Players film company. Porter made over 250 films, including “The Great Train Robbery” in 1903, a 12-minute success that established the commercial potential of film in the United States.
In Porter’s film, Bertha Regustus plays Mandy Brown, a black woman with a terrible toothache. She goes to the Painless Dentist, who gives her laughing gas (as noted by a sign on the office wall) and pulls the tooth. Mandy wakes up laughing, and the dentist and his assistant join in (Image 4). Everyone she meets on her way home, including subway passengers, several policemen, and a minister and his congregation, catch her infectious laughter. Made when Porter worked at Edison, the film is remarkable for featuring a black woman as the lead in a comedy. Many of the actors with whom Mandy interacts are white.
Besides the 1907 films, other silents were released under the same title in 1915 and 1920. But the most famous “Laughing Gas” silent is a Keystone comedy released in 1914 and starring Charlie Chaplin, who was just beginning his film career (Image 5-7). Chaplin is the assistant of a dentist named Dr. Pain, and over the course of 16 minutes he manages to enrage the dentist, his wife, patients and various others with his antics. Alice Howell, who plays the dentist’s wife, was sometimes called the “girl Charlie Chaplin.”
One serious incident happens before hilarity ensues. Dr. Pain is unable to awaken the anesthetized patient when the procedure is over. But then the dentist leaves the office, telling Chaplin to wake him up. Chaplin does so with a mallet, and the patient is revived, laughing.
Several early silent films have “The Dentist” as a title. Two were made in 1917, one by comedy producer Mack Sennett and the other featuring Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, a comedy couple. Comedian Billy West was featured in one film in 1918, and comedian Sid Smith in another in 1922. Whether any of these titles featured laughing gas hilarity is unknown, but chances are probably high.
Comedian Chester Conklin also made a “Laughing Gas” short in 1922, but nothing else is known about it. In 1928, the popular comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy released the 21-minute short “Leave ‘em Laughing.” Stan has the toothache, but Ollie gets his tooth pulled. Both leave the dentist’s office laughing from the effects of a spilled nitrous oxide gas canister.
In his classic 1932 short “The Dentist,” W.C. Fields (Image 8) manages to include a laughing gas joke when he finally returns to his home office after all the hijinks on the golf course. He asks a female patient if she wants gas before her tooth extraction, and she responds either that or electric lights—“I’d be nervous for you to fool around me in the dark.”
Gas in Cartoons
In the 1930s, audiences could watch at least two cartoons featuring laughing gas hijinks along with their movies. During the previous decade, the animator Ub Iwerks had worked with Walt Disney and helped refine the Mickey Mouse character. In 1930, Iwerks opened his own studio and introduced Flip the Frog. The following year, Flip appeared as a maniacal dentist in “Laughing Gas” and, in one scene, uses a very unique anesthetic involving a skunk.
Three years later, the Betty Boop character (Image 9) had her own encounter with laughing gas in “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Created by Max Fleischer, the flapper caricature Betty was one of the most popular cartoon figures in the 1930s. In this seven-minute adventure, Betty gives some laughing gas to ease Koko the Clown’s toothache, but the gas spreads throughout the room. Soon, a cuckoo clock and a typewriter are also laughing maniacally; the gas escapes and other objects in the neighborhood join the laughter.
Use of laughing gas in movie entertainment seems to occur rarely after the early sound period. A dentist samples the gas in the 1960 comedy “Little Shop of Horrors” and its 1986 remake. Nitrous oxide does appear in other contexts, such as villain Frank Booth’s use of what is presumably the gas in David Lynch’s 1986 film “Blue Velvet.” (Image 10.)
There are probably several comedic uses on television over the years. In its third season, “Gunsmoke” featured an episode in March 1958 titled “Laughing Gas” that involved a medicine show visiting Dodge. A version also aired on the earlier radio incarnation of the show. A second-season episode of the comedy “The Bill Dana Show,” broadcast in October 1964, is called “Laughing Gas.” I would imagine other examples can be found.
Such entertainments have been resurrected with a vengeance by the internet. Just do a search for “laughing gas” on YouTube, and you’ll see what I mean (another source is the Internet Archive).
The author served as librarian in the Department of Anesthesia at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, from 1983 to 2015.
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