Preservative plan; or, hints for the preservation of persons exposed to those accidents which suddenly suspend or extingui[s]h vital action, and by which many valuable lives are prematurely lost to the community / by A. Fothergill.

  • Anthony Fothergill
Date:
1798
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Preservative plan; or, hints for the preservation of persons exposed to those accidents which suddenly suspend or extingui[s]h vital action, and by which many valuable lives are prematurely lost to the community / by A. Fothergill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    i [ 23 ] Gunpowder and other explofive Compounds. 1. In the manufa£lure and management of gunpowdetj in which fo many dreadful difafters happen, it is impoffible to be too cautious. The ingenious philofopher Dr. Moyes alTures me, that gunpowder, independent of the accidents occafioned by unpardonable careleflhefs, is liable to a.fpontaneous cxplofion, from caufes hitherto little fufpe6led. That from too hard beating, or too forcibly ramming down the charge, or even by the violent rolling of a fhip in. a hard gale, the great guns have been known fuddenly to go off without any vifible caufe. That a mere air-bubble in a pane of glafs, converging the folar rays, as in a fpeculum, has been known to, blow up a magazine of gunpowder. 2. Befides gunpowder, there are other dangerous compofitions capable of producing, on expofure to heat, no. lefs violent explofions. Such are the fulminating calces of gold, filver, or copper: but, above all, the oxygenated muriate of pot-afh, which, in a late experiment at Paris, by the gentleft friction imaginable, caufed a tremendous explofion, which proved fatal to more than one of the fpeftators, 3. Other bodies there are which, without the intervention of fire, are capable of igniting combuftible fubftances, or burfling into actual flame, and therefore, in the hands of ignorant perfons, B 4 may