The control of patients’ pain and anxiety has been a fundamental part of the practice of dentistry since Horace Wells underwent dental treatment using nitrous oxide anaesthesia in 1844, and subsequently used it on his own patients prior to an ill-fated demonstration in Massachusetts General Hospital in 1845 [1]. The use of nitrous oxide was the first of a number of major milestones in this area. These included the use of ether by William TG Morton in 1846 [2], and the first administration of local anaesthesia for dentistry by William Halsted in 1844 [3]. The development of inhalation sedation for dentistry, as opposed to general anaesthesia, was popularised by Harry Langha who first described the technique in the 1940s before running the first postgraduate sedation course in 1949 [4]. Techniques of intravenous sedation followed with the work of Jorgensen in 1945 and then Drummond-Jackson the founder of the Society for the Advancement of Anaesthesia in Dentistry in 1957 [5].