to have lost its contractility. Previous experimentalists had also remarked hypnotic effects from the inhalation of it diluted with oxygen.[1] As to oxygen, the same physiologist ascertained that when pure, it is a narcotic poison, though a feeble one, as at least five hours of continuous respiration in the pure gas are required to prove fatal.[2]
Of the Effects of the Poisonous Gases on Man.
According to the effects of the poisonous gases on man, they may be arranged in two groups, the first including the irritants, the second the narcotics. It might have been therefore a more philosophical mode of arrangement, if the former had been considered under the irritant class of poisons; but it is more convenient to examine the whole deleterious gases together.
The irritant gases are nitric oxide gas and nitrous acid vapour, hydrochloric acid gas, chlorine, ammonia, sulphurous acid, and some others of little consequence.
Of Nitric oxide gas and Nitrous acid vapour.—Before nitric oxide gas can be breathed in ordinary circumstances, it is transformed by the oxygen of the air into nitrous acid vapour, of a ruddy colour and irritating odour. Hébréart found that in animals killed by inhaling it the windpipe was much inflamed.[3] Sir H. Davy tried to inhale it, and with this view took the precaution of previously breathing the nitrous oxide or intoxicating gas, in order to expel the atmospheric air as much as possible from his lungs. But he found that the small quantity of nitrous acid fumes formed with the remaining air was sufficient to cause a sense of burning in the throat, and at once stimulated the glottis to contract, so that none of the nitric oxide gas could pass into the larynx. The subsequent entrance of the external air into the mouth, which Sir Humphrey unluckily had not provided for, was of course attended by the immediate formation of more acid fumes, by which his tongue, cheeks, and gums, were irritated and inflamed; and there is no doubt, as Sir Humphrey himself remarks, that if he had succeeded in inhaling the nitric oxide gas, the same chemical change would have happened in the lungs and excited pneumonia.[4]
The following cases will prove that nitrous acid vapour, disengaged from the fuming nitrous acid, is a very violent and dangerous poison when inhaled. A chemical manufacturer, in endeavouring to remove from his store-room a hamper in which some bottles of nitrous acid had burst, breathed the fumes for some time, and was seized in four hours with symptoms of inflammation in the throat and stomach. At night the urine was suppressed; the skin then became blue; at last he was seized with hiccup, acute pain in the diaphragm, con-*
