Recollections of Horace Wells at Harvard
Senator and Congressman Truman Smith published this account in defense of Horace Wells in an attempt to put an end to the ether controversy.
I should be sorry should it appear that I have done injustice to any one, which has been far from my intention. That I have presented the essential elements of the case, in conformity with the fact, I verily believe…. I have been constrained to come to conclusions directly the reverse of those adopted by many characters of the first respectability. I would not impeach the motives of any one, but I must believe that in most instances, the facts have been taken on trust, and that parties who have committed themselves to pretensions to which I stand opposed, have done so in many, and perhaps in most cases, with little or a very slight knowledge of the subject.
Here Smith reproduces testimonial letters of William M. Cornell and Mason M. Miles who were both medical students at Harvard during the Wells demonstrations.
This copy of the Inquiry belonged to sculptor Truman Howe Bartlett (1835-1922) who also had a bronze death mask of Horace Wells which he used as the basis for a sculpture in Hartford.