Considerations on the medicinal use of factitious airs and on the manner of obtaining them / [Thomas Beddoes].

  • Thomas Beddoes
Date:
[1794?]-1796
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on the medicinal use of factitious airs and on the manner of obtaining them / [Thomas Beddoes]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fi ( 10 ) to a bright, florid, ruddy colour. You may fee this dif- ference of colours, by breaking a clot of blood that has ftood a little time in the air; the furface will be ruddy, the infide dark coloured. The reafon is, becaufe the furface of the blood draws to itfelf fome oxygene from the atmofphere. When black blood is put into azotic air, it does not become ruddy. Azotic air extinguifhes flame, does not.-burn when mixed, or in conta&, with common air, and is not abforbed by lime-water. Near the earth, thefe two airs are found. mixed with furprifing exa€tuefs. Take a cubic foot from ten different places, and you will find that a little more than a quarter of each is oxygene; the reft azotic air; a little carbonic acid air, as one part in an hundred, is often found, though no fires burn, or animals breathe near.— The nice balance of attra€tion between the two confti- tuent parts of the atmofphere, deferves notice. Thefe two fubftances, when clofely united, form nitrous acid: If, therefore, they had a ftronger attra€tion, or were not, by fome circumftances, prevented from uniting clofely, all the oxygene, with part of the azote, would be changed into this highly corrofive acid. Again, azotic is lighter . than oxygene air; if, therefore, they had not fome at- traction, they might feparate, and any animals, that fhould be. immerfed in an atmofphere of azotic air, would al- moftinftantly expire: (he undiluted oxygene remaining below, would, as we fhall prefently fee, occafion violent difeafes in quadrupeds with warm blood and in man, as well in many other animals. I].—Of the breathing of man and animals with warm blood. It you fix a pipe to a bladder full of air, and, holding your noftrils, breathe this air for fome time, your dif- treffed feelings wili inform you that itis no longer fit for breathing. If you transfer this breathed air into an _ inverted glafs jar full of water, and turn up the jar fo as to keep in the air, and admit none from the atmofphere, you will find that it extinguifhes a candle, and deftroys the life of a {mall animal, dipped into it. If you pro- eure another quantity of this air, and add to ita little more
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