Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/89

 phosphoric and oxygenic food; but the very instant that the gaseous exhalations, frequently generated in such places, reach a point of volume, bulk, or amount, sufficient to absorb or neutralize the oxygen, as is liable to occur from the combination forming new compounds in those dark abodes, that instant, grim Death, mounted on the terrible choke-damp, — as the accumulation of foul air is called, — rides forth to annihilate and exterminate every moving, living being there!

Again: It may happen that oxygen, 'which is the principle of flame, accumulates too fast, gathers in too great volume, and unites with other inflammable gases. In such a case, woe be to that mine and its hundreds of human occupants, if by accident or carelessness the least fiery spark touches that combustible air, — for an explosion louder than the roar of a hundred guns upon a battle-field takes place; one vast sheet of red-hot flame leaps forth to shatter, blast, and destroy, and in one moment the work of years is undone, the mine crushed in, and no living being escapes to tell the dreadful story of the awful and sudden doom. If the entire oxygen of the air should take fire, as it might by a very slight increase of its volume, the entire globe would burn like a cotton-field on fire, and the entire surface of the earth be changed into solid glass within an hour.

And yet this terrible agent is man's best and truest friend. It is a splendid nurse; and a better physician never yet existed, and never will. This great truth long since forced itself upon the popular mind; but no sooner were the people familiar with the name of oxygen, than empirical toadstools, in the shape of unprincipled quacks, sprung up all over the land, persuading sick people that they would speedily get well by breathing what they had the impudence to call "vitalized air," — as if God himself had not sufficiently vitalized the great aerial ocean in which the world is cushioned; or that health and power would come again by inhaling " oxygenized air," — as if it were possible to add one particle of oxygen to the air we breathe, more than God placed there originally.

A couple of these harpies once partially convinced me that they really effected cures by administering what they called oxygenized air, and, liking the theory, I accepted it, and even wrote two or three articles in its favor. But when I looked into the matter and