An approximation and research after the choleraic principle, and the means to render the causes innocuous.
- Booth, G. R.
- Date:
- 1854
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An approximation and research after the choleraic principle, and the means to render the causes innocuous. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Now the abundance of carbon in coal having united with so large a portion of oxygen by combustion, &c., the carbon can chemically unite, in certain electric conditions, with the nitrogen left floating in the atmosphere, and form cyanogen and prussic acid,* or some con- terminous compounds. Secondly, let us ask, are the effects of cyano- gen, or prussic acid, upon the human frame, similar to those of Cholera? Both of .them cause the blood vessels to assume a deep blue color, and produce the same action and viscidity of the blood.-] Now may not the human body be acted upon by the nitrogen, &e., through the lungs, so that the blood is presented with nitrogen, car- bonic acid, and hydrogenous gas, instead of its natural proportions of nitrogen and oxygen, and prussic acid is thus probably formed in the human body, and is not Cholera thus produced ? So it would appear, that from the want of oxygen, or the excess of nitrogen, which is the same thing, Cholera is the result; because the air becomes capable of forming prussic acid with hydrogen in the human body, or, otherwise, it is inhaled as a vapour, and therefore Cholera is the effect, and cyanogen the radical cause. Now if we find that there are places, under certain circumstances, which produce those premises we have stated as the causes of Cholera, and where it has made its appearance, and that there are other places, under different or altogether wanting such circumstances, and where Cholera lias not appeared, it may be pre- sumed that we have discovered the true solution of its origin, and this, with the electric or physical circumstances, may aid the develop- * Cyanogen, or a combination of nitrogen and carbon, being thus formed in the atmosphere, the origin of an attack of Cholera in the vicinity of sewers and cess- pools is apparent, for there the cyanogen finds the hydrogen escaping, unites with it, producing the vapour of prussic acid, and deals death to all exposed to its pes- tiferous influence. It is to be remarked, that where there is the greatest evolution of hydrogenous gases, there the Cholera is most virulent, either in mining countries, swamps, or in the vicinity of cesspools, sewers, &c. f The nitrogen, as one basis of the poison we are describing, which is left in the air after the abstraction of the oxygen by the combustion of this quantity of coal, amounts to four times the bulk of the oxygen extracted, or to 1,214,400,000,000 or upwards of one million of millions of cubic feet. This would alone equal a cube or square block of forty-five thousand millions of yards, and no calculation is here made of the coals procured and consumed in other places, but is simply confined to the consumption in these islands only.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22384121_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
