Sometime around 1890, Dr. C. Monroe Crowell operated a Dental Parlor at the corner of East King and Duke Streets in Lancaster, PA.

His lithographed advertising card features a playful group of puppies on the face.

On the reverse, Dr. Crowell describes his practice of painless dentistry using “vitalised air”.

When I saw the advertising card at a postcard exhibition, I was curious about the anesthesia, “vitalised air”.

A quick internet search reveals that the term was a euphemism for nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.

There were many lurid tales reported in the popular press of mishaps and adverse consequences related to “laughing gas” – so enterprising dentists began using the term, “vitalised air”.

(One source reports the the first use of the term in Pennsylvania was by a dentist in York, PA.)

The dentist mixed the solution at the office, sometimes adding trace amounts of chloroform and alcohol to prolong the effects of the gas.

On-line, one can find numerous articles “vitalised air”, including an excerpt from a textbook on Inorganic Chemistry (1906) which describes the use of nitrous oxide in dentistry.