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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    ( 416. :) ofthe lungs, we are thus furnifhed with the means of obtaining it ina fufficiently divided ftate; and to free it from any adherent acid, it may be paffed through a cauftic alcali. , If the calx of zinc is thought preferable, it is fuf- pended in inflammable air in great quantities, by apply- ing water or fteam to red hot zincin clofe veflels, and probably alfo by the common procefs of making com. mon inflammable air from zinc by vitriolic acid. The calces of zinc are very efficacious in healing external fores ; and are very likely to be fo 1n internal ones, pro- vided they can be applied, as I think they may, by the means indicated. Charcoal has lately been found extremely efficacious in corre€ting putridity, and in difpofing ulcers to heal, It feems to me,-that no fubftance is diffolved in common inflammable air in fuch quantities as charcoal, nor more intimately united. If water is applied to red-hot char- ~ coal in clofe veffels, the heavy inflammable air 1s pro- duced in large quantities; and this air has been found to contain inflammable air, properly fo called, fixed air, fe- parable by water or by alkalies, and fome other fub- ftance, which, when the inflammable air is deflagrated © with oxygene air, produces fixed air. This fubftance I] confider as charcoal in a ftate of folution; for were it fixed air completely formed, it would be feparated by the means mentioned. Whether charcoal in this {tate could . be decompofed by any excefs of oxygene in the blood of confumptive patients, I cannot fay ; but it feems likely that it would; and at any rate it would aét as charcoal powder does, and therefore highly merits trial. As fixed air is a faturated folution of charcoal in oxy- gene air, it is not probable that the lungs can decompofe it; we fhould therefore only look to its effeéts as an an- tifeptic. As the lungs, when doing their duty, fhould f{éparate, and throw out fixed air, .it.1s not probable they will abforb it, though it may have fome effeét merely by excluding the oxygene of the commonair. I think, however, it will be found to have.moft beneficial effe&ts in cafes of a putrefcent tendency; or if you-do not like this theoretical phrafe, where the breath and expeéto- sated matter arefetid. The {pecies I. would recommend 1S
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