his researches, which were continued above two months, breathed it occasionally three or four times a day for a week together, at other periods four or five times a week only; yet at the end his health was good, his mind clear, his digestion perfect, and his strength only a little impaired.[1]
Nitrous oxide gas is one of the few gases that are not injurious to vegetables. Dr. Turner and I found that seventy-two cubic inches, diluted with six times their volume of air, had no effect on a mignionette plant in forty-eight hours.[2]
Of Poisoning with Cyanogen Gas.—Cyanogen gas has been proved by the experiments of M. Coullon to be an active poison to all animals,—the guinea-pig, sparrow, leech, frog, wood-louse, fly, crab; and the symptoms induced were coma, and more rarely convulsions.[3] These results are confirmed by the later experiments of Hünefeld, who found that it produces in the rabbit anxious breathing, slight convulsions, staring of the eyes, dilated pupils, coma, and death in five or six minutes.[4] Buchner likewise found that small birds, held for a few seconds over the mouth of a jar containing cyanogen, died very speedily; and on one occasion remarked, while preparing the gas, that the fore-finger, which was exposed to the bubbles as they escaped, became suddenly benumbed, and that this effect was attended with a singular feeling of pressure and contraction in the joints of the thumb and elbow.[5] It would undoubtedly be most dangerous to breathe this gas, except much diluted, and in very small quantity.
Of all narcotic gases it is the most noxious to vegetables. Dr. Turner and I found that a third of a cubic inch, diluted with 1700 times its volume of air, caused the leaves of a mignionette plant to droop in twenty-four hours. As usual with the effects of narcotic gases on vegetables, the drooping went on after the plant was removed into the open air; and in a short time it was completely killed.[6]
Of Poisoning with Oxygen Gas.—Of all the narcotic gases, none is more singular in its effects than oxygen. When breathed in a state of purity by animals, they live much longer than in the same volume of atmospheric air. But if the experiment be kept up for a sufficient length of time, symptoms of narcotic poisoning begin to manifest themselves. For an hour no inconvenience seems to be felt; but the breathing and pulse then become accelerated; a state of debility next ensues; at length insensibility gradually comes on, with glazing of the eyes, slow respiration and gasping; coma is in the end completely formed; and death ensues in the course of six, ten, or twelve hours. If the animals are removed into the air before the insensibility is considerable, they quickly recover. When the body is examined immediately after death, the heart is seen beating strongly,
