Carbonic acid in medicine / by Achilles Rose, M.D. ; with the portraits of van Helmont, Priestley and Lavoisier.

  • Achilles Rose
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Carbonic acid in medicine / by Achilles Rose, M.D. ; with the portraits of van Helmont, Priestley and Lavoisier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the history of the science. Priestley here set forth improvements in the methods of collecting gases, and especially the use of mercury in the pneumatic trough, which enabled him to deal for the first time with gases soluble in water. He announced the discovery of marine acid air (hydrochloric acid) and nitrous air (nitric oxid). He showed that in air exposed over water one- fifth disappears in processes of combustion, respiration, and putrefaction, and that plants restore air vitiated by these processes, and that no known gas conducted electricity. The paper also contained a proposal to satu- rate water with carbonic acid under either atmospheric or increased pressure, which has led to the creation of the mineral-water in- dustry. Of this means of making Pyrmont water'' (which he described in a pamphlet in June, 1777), he wrote: I can make better than you import, and what cost you five shil- lings will not cost me a penny. Priestley likewise described the preparation of pure ni- trogen, a gas to which ne gave the vague name of phlogisticated air, only recognizing it later [35]