OFFICIAL NAMES: Nitrous oxide

STREET NAMES: N2O, nitrous, laughing gas, whippets, whip-its, hippie crack

DRUG CLASSIFICATIONS: Not scheduled

Overview

Nitrous oxide is a gas with anesthetic (numbness-causing) and (painkilling) analgesic properties. It was first discovered in 1772 by English scientist, theologian, and philosopher Joseph Priestly. Priestly was also the man who co-discovered oxygen (which he termed "phlogisticated air"). In 1776, he wrote about the discovery of N₂O, which he called "nitrous air."

The first scientist to discover the unique anesthetic and intoxicant effects of nitrous oxide was Sir Humphry Davy, an English physiologist whose self-experimentations with the gas became legendary. In Davy's book Researches, Chemical and Philosophical: Chiefly concerning nitrous oxide, or dephiogisticated nitrous air, and its respiration (1800) he suggests that nitrous may be a useful anesthetic in surgical situations, and "appears capable of destroying physical pain."

However, despite Davy's writings on the subject...