An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays, on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation / by Thomas Young.

Date:: 1823

Credit: An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology : intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays, on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation / by Thomas Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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for the 18.475 parts of hydrogen, that is, 2.46, for 100 parts of ammonium : but it is evident, that a small error in the former numbers, may have produced a much greater in these smaller ones. (8) . P. 600 Gay Lussac has shown, that nitrogen, with half its volume of oxygen, becomes nitrous oxyd, with an equal volume, nitric oxyd, with 1^, nitrous acid, and with twice its volume, nitric. Now, 100 parts of nitric acid sa- turate a base containing 14.5 or 14.6 of oxygen, which is not a submultiple of 69.488, the quantity oi oxygen in the acid, as it ought to be according to the general law, being more than and less than If therefore this statement were simply true, the general law would be false. But if we assume, that nitrogen contains 56.973 per cent, of oxy- gen, the 63.72 of nitrogen contained, according to Gay Lussac’s experiments, in 100 of nitrous oxyd, must contain 36.29 of oxygen, which is equal to the additional portion of oxygen combined with it to form this oxyd; and upon this assumption, the nitric acid must consist of 13 parts ammo- nium, and 87 oxygen, -i of which is 14.5, corresponding to the oxygen of the base of a nitrate ; a coincidence which affords an additional argument for the compound nature of nitrogen. And the quantities of oxygen in nitrogen, the two oxyds, and the two acids, will be represented by 1,2, 3, 4, and 5; [here, however, it is supposed, that the number 1§, assigned by Gay Lussac, ought to have been 1|.. P. 603.] (9) . P. 604. It is probable that the muriatic acid, of which 100 parts neutralise a base containing 29.454 of oxy- gen, contains twice as much oxygen as the base, that is, 58.9 per cent, since any other supposition would afford a less regular progression in its compounds. It contains, insepar- ably united, a portion of water, of which the oxygen is equal to that of any other base, and which amounts to £ of its whole weight. P. 611. Against Davy’s hypothesis of the simplicity of the oxymuriatic acid, or chlorine, it is impossible to advance any conclusive arguments; some analogies, however, appear

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