Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 18–24
Original Research
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—was Robert Louis Stevenson inspired by Horace Wells? ☆ ☆☆
Abstract
It has been suggested that Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
derived inspiration from the real-life tragedy of the final days of
Connecticut dentist Horace Wells, innovator of the clinical use of the
anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. We examined Stevenson's letters,
biographies, and other references in the literature, press, and online
to determine whether any factual basis exists for Stevenson to be aware
of Wells' life, and also if it played any role in creating the novel's
plot. Stevenson was born in Scotland, several years after Wells had
committed suicide in New York. Wells' life and death received widespread
coverage in the northeastern United States, but there is no evidence
that it was printed in newspapers or periodicals in England or Scotland.
On the other hand, novelists of the period, psychologists, and the lay
public were quite interested in the concept of split personalities and
the dual nature of man, so these may have been natural substrates for
the novel. There is evidence that Stevenson dreamt about episodes
similar to those depicted in his novel. All claims to any relationship
between Wells and the novel come from the United States, and none of
them are backed by evidence. In the absence of evidence supporting a
relationship between the behavior exhibited by Wells during his final
days and any inspiration that Stevenson might have derived from it, we
conclude that there is insufficient evidence to suggest any relationship
between them.
Keywords
- Stevenson;
- Robert Louis Stevenson;
- Dr. Jekyll;
- Mr. Hyde;
- Horace Wells
Background
Scottish
novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote essays, stories,
novels, poems, plays, and biographies during a prolific 20-year literary
career. He is best known for his select dozen or so novels, which
include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Black Arrow, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Biographers have noted that many of Stevenson's writings are based on
experiences from either his own life or those of individuals known to
him.
Horace Wells (1815-1848)
was an American dentist who spent most of his life in New England. The
highlight of his professional career was the innovation of the clinical
use of the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. After his extensive
use of the agent in his dental practice, he attempted to demonstrate its
efficacy near Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, in January 1845.
During the tooth extraction, for poorly documented reasons, the patient
cried out—although later admitting that he had not felt any pain.
Nonetheless, the audience was convinced that this was a hoax. The entire
demonstration was labeled as “humbug,” and Wells' personal life and
career immediately took a downward spiral. He desperately sought
recognition for his work in Europe, after which he attempted to restart
his dental practice in Hartford, Connecticut, and later in New York. He
began abusing ether and chloroform as well as making the acquaintance of
at least one unsavory individual. One evening in 1848, under the
influence of drugs, he splashed acid on two prostitutes and was arrested
and remanded to the notorious Tombs prison in New York. Wells committed
suicide while incarcerated by using a razor to slash an artery in his
groin, having inhaled chloroform to dull the pain, and thus ended a
brilliant career marked by triumph as well as tragedy.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
is the only novel by Stevenson that explores the topic of split
personality and the duality of human existence. The story begins with an
inexplicable attack on a child in the middle of the night by a certain
Edward Hyde. The rough man who commits this crime is apprehended and
pays a fine with a check bearing the signature of the respectable Dr.
Henry Jekyll, a signature that is verified by the bank as being genuine.
The story continues as friends and acquaintances of the good doctor try
to come to terms with his unusual behavior and unwillingness to
participate in his usual social activities. Indications point to
something amiss without hinting as to what this may be. The appearances
of the solitary Hyde, who continues entering and leaving an adjacent
building through a dilapidated door, add more questions about Jekyll's
strange behavior. As the novel comes to its end, the reader discovers
that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same. The tale ends with the
despairing suicide of the protagonist(s).
The Author—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Robert
Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850,
the only child to respectable middle-class parents [1].
His childhood upbringing in the fashionable New Town of the city
reflected the family's distinguished heritage in civil and maritime
engineering [1].
Thomas Stevenson, his father, was a famous lighthouse engineer, who
served as President of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts (1859-1860) [2] and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1884-1886) [3]. He was also a founding member of the Scottish Meteorological Society in 1855 [2]. His wife was Margret Balfour, the daughter of a reverend with a strict religious outlook on life [1].
Despite
this robust lineage, "Louis" Stevenson grew into a young man suffering
both from chronic ill health and a romantic, liberal nature [4].
His father's wishes for his only son to carry on the family's esteemed
name and line of work were to be disappointed, for although the
17-year-old Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study
engineering, it was clear from the start that “formal learning did not
interest him” [4].
His time at the university was invested instead in exploring the alleys
of the Old Town, just beyond the hallowed walls of learning [4].
Indeed, its “louche, bohemia drinking-houses” became his refuge from
the constraints of the prudish upper-middle class of Victorian society,
opening up a “freer, more honest, less hypocritical way of life” than
that of the New Town [4].
Thus, it was perhaps little surprise to Thomas Stevenson when, in April
1871, young Stevenson announced his wish to pursue a literary career
instead of a life of steady income and social standing [5].
However, it was possibly his son's frail health that made Thomas
“wonderfully resigned” to the possibility that Louis was not suited to
the arduous work of a marine engineer and permitted Louis the freedom to
choose his own path in life [5].
Young
Stevenson soon severed the ties with his childhood upbringing more
drastically when he renounced Christian beliefs, a subject that was to
cause much dispute between father and son [6].
Moving away from the predominant Victorian doctrine and conservative
realism of the time, he abandoned a career in law as soon he passed the
bar examinations in 1875 and fulfilled his dreams of traveling and
writing for the remainder of his life [5].
Taking
to his new freedom with enthusiasm, Stevenson moved in London's
literary circles with Andrew Land, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen [6].
In 1873, he met Sidney Colvin and Fanny Sitwell during a visit to
Suffolk, England. Colvin, best known as the editor of the posthumous
collection of The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, was to become a good friend and advisor [6].
Sitwell, an older woman estranged from her husband, soon became the
focus of much of Stevenson's attention—he even came to address her as
his “Madonna” in his letters [7]—but his love appeared unrequited, and she was to later marry Colvin in 1903 [6].
Stevenson's travels to continental Europe took him to France several times [5]. At first, he went to recuperate from ill health [6], but an encounter with a married American art student Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne at the end of a canoe voyage led to romance [5].
He spent a year with Fanny and her children in Paris and, the following
year, pursued her through great financial and physical adversity across
the ocean to California [6]. After Fanny's divorce, they married in May 1880 when Stevenson was age 29 [8]. The adventure and hardship of these years were the inspiration for his earliest published works, including An Inland Voyage (1878), Travels with a Donkey in Cévennes (1879), and The Amateur Emigrant (published posthumously, in 1895) [9].
The new couple, along with Fanny's son Lloyd, returned to Scotland in 1880 to start their life together [8].
The next few years (1880-1887) included summers in Scotland and
England, in particular his beloved house “Skerryvore” in Bournemouth on
the southern coast of England, and winters in France [7].
It is believed that, in the face of increasing infirmity, these years
brought Stevenson great joy and happiness: “yet if I could but heal me
of my bellowses, I could have a jolly life—have it, even now…I have so
many things to make life sweet for me, it seems a pity I cannot have
that one other thing—health” [10]. To be sure, many of his most famous works were to emerge from this period starting with his first popular book Treasure Island (1883) and continuing on with Kidnapped (1886) and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) [11]. The last was to establish his international fame [11].
These golden years came to an abrupt end with the death of Thomas Stevenson in 1887 [8].
The widowed Mrs Stevenson joined her son and his family in the United
States, traveling from the Adirondacks in Upstate New York to San
Francisco, California, and eventually setting sail to make their new
home in the Eastern and Central Pacific Islands [8].
Robert Louis Stevenson spent 3 years sailing the archipelagos of the
South Seas, fulfilling the dreams of adventure from his boyhood that are
immortalized in his book Treasure Island [12]. Stevenson's liberal ways adjusted well to the unconventional lifestyle presented by the culture of these islands [13].
In October 1890, he bought a 400-acre estate that he named “Vailima”
(five rivers) in Upolu, Samoa, and immersed himself in local politics [14].
Arguably, his most significant legacy to his last home, however, was
his relationship with the native islanders, who bestowed upon him the
affectionate nickname “Tusitala” meaning “the story teller” in the
Samoan language [13].
After
a long battle though, his illness, presumably tuberculosis, was to
finally become a great enough burden to impact his life and work, and
his letters reveal that this was a source of much frustration [15]. He felt his creative spark finally rekindle in what he considered his literary masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston; sadly, it was to remain unfinished [16]. An obituary in The New York Times dated December 18, 1894, read as follows:
A dispatch to The Star, dated Apia, Samoa, Dec. 8, confirms the report that Robert Louis Stevenson, the novelist, died suddenly a few days ago from apoplexy. His body was buried on the summit of Paa Mountain, 1,300 feet high…although Mr. Stevenson was anything but apoplectic, there is little doubt that his untimely end was due to apoplexy, induced by the heat of the climate [17].
Note
that “apoplexy” was the term used in the late 19th century for a
cerebrovascular accident (stroke) resulting from cerebral hemorrhage or
ischemia [18].
The inhabitants of Upolu carried his body through the specially carved
“Road of Loving Hearts” to rest at the 1300-ft summit of Mount Vaea,
overlooking his last home, Vailima [19]. His untimely death “created a small shock wave” felt most keenly by contemporary literary circles [20].
His
legacy through the ages has changed significantly. Immediately after
his death, a flurry of obituaries, memoirs, letters, and hagiographies
were published by those who knew him, sanctifying the man and his work [20]. These include the well-known works Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson and The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson [5],
written by his cousin Graham Balfour. Those who came after rebelled
against this idolized image, and so Stevenson's name became relegated to
the shelves of children's books and horror stories for much of the 20th
century [20].
In recent times, attention has turned to his lesser-known works, his
reputation rising among literary purists who acknowledged his presence
within the ranks of true Victorian literature [20].
The Dentist Who Discovered the Anesthetic Properties of Nitrous Oxide—Dr. Horace Wells
Horace
Wells was born in Hartford, Vermont, on January 21, 1815. His childhood
and school days were spent in Vermont and New Hampshire. He studied
dentistry in Boston, Massachusetts, and worked there until 1836, before
moving to Hartford, Connecticut. A compassionate and deeply religious
man, he was greatly disturbed by the pain inflicted in extracting teeth.
Many attempts to ameliorate pain were unsuccessful, and he was an early
advocate of preventive dentistry; often, his patients found themselves
being reminded that a clean tooth would not be a decayed tooth. The
early 1840s saw two drugs being used for entertainment and inebriation
in the social setting—nitrous oxide and ether. Wells and his wife
attended one such laughing gas (nitrous oxide) demonstration by Dr.
Gardner Quincy Colton on December 10, 1844. During the evening, a
volunteer named Samuel Cooley went on stage and inhaled the gas. While
returning to his seat a few minutes later, Cooley fell and injured his
leg. Although the injury was severe enough to cause bleeding, he did not
feel any pain for the first few minutes. The keen dentist put two and
two together and surmised that nitrous oxide most likely had
pain-relieving properties. Wells convinced Colton to attend Wells'
office the next morning and administer the gas to him, as fellow dentist
John Riggs extracted one of Wells' teeth. No pain was felt, and this
remarkable experiment marked the discovery of the anesthetic properties
of nitrous oxide.
Wells used
nitrous oxide in his own practice regularly and proceeded to demonstrate
its properties near Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, in early
1845. The medical student who volunteered to have his tooth extracted
under the effect of nitrous oxide screamed when the tooth was extracted.
Although he later admitted that he felt no pain, the demonstration was
labeled as “humbug,” and Wells felt ridiculed and humiliated. Efforts to
establish his claim as the discoverer of anesthesia led him to Paris,
but he returned several months later, a defeated and changed man. He
made the decision to move to New York City, where he began
self-administering ether and chloroform in large doses, transforming the
kindly, sensitive dentist into a man crazed by dependency. Under the
influence of chloroform, he was arrested for splashing vitriol
(sulphuric acid) on two prostitutes and taken to the Tombs, a notorious
prison in New York. He persuaded a sympathetic prison official to allow
him to collect some important belongings from his office, accompanied by
a prison guard. Unbeknown to the guard, Wells managed to smuggle into
the prison a razor and a bottle of chloroform. A prison chaplain visited
Wells and decided that, given the circumstances, he appeared normal.
Meanwhile, Wells was tormented by the realization of his terrible
actions. Guilt ridden, he wrote a long, apologetic letter to his wife
and committed suicide soon after on January 24, 1848. The act was
carried out by severing his femoral artery with the razor, while under
the influence of chloroform, and thus ended the life of a most
compassionate man, an individual who discovered the anesthetic
properties of nitrous oxide. It may be speculated how history would have
been written had the demonstration near Massachusetts General Hospital
been successful, just like the innumerable times he had used the agent
at his practice in Hartford.