Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/628

 *dered a sufficient cause of the disease by Dr. Spurgin and Messrs. Angus and Saunders of Clapham, as well as by Drs. Latham and Chambers, and Mr. Pearson of London, who personally examined the whole particulars. Their explanation may be the only rational account that can be given of the matter. But as no detail of their chemical inquiries was ever published, their opinion cannot be received with confidence by the medical jurist and the physician; since it is not supported, so far as I am aware by any previous account of the effects of hydrosulphuric acid gas.

Of Poisoning with Carburetted Hydrogen.—Of the several species of carburetted hydrogen gas it is probable that all are more or less narcotic; but they are much inferior in energy to sulphuretted hydrogen.

Sir H. Davy found that when he breathed a mixture of two parts of air and three of carburetted hydrogen, procured from the decomposition of water by red-hot charcoal, he was attacked with giddiness, headache, and transient weakness of the limbs. When he breathed it pure, the first inspiration caused a sense of numbness in the muscles of the chest; the second caused an overpowering sense of oppression in the breast, and insensibility to external objects; during the third he seemed sinking into annihilation, and the mouthpiece dropped out of his hand. On becoming again sensible, which happened in less than a minute, he continued for some time to suffer from a feeling of impending suffocation, extreme exhaustion, and great feebleness of the pulse. Throughout the rest of the day he was affected with weakness, giddiness and rending headache. These experiments show that the gas is deleterious. Yet Nysten found it inert when injected into the veins, and what is more to the point, colliers breathe the air of coal mines without apparent injury when strongly impregnated with it.

The mixed gases of coal-gas or oil-gas appear likewise to be inert when considerably diluted; for gas-men breathe with impunity an atmosphere considerably loaded with them; and in the course of some researches on the illuminating power and best mode of burning these gases, Dr. Turner and myself daily, for two months, breathed air strongly impregnated with them, but never remarked any unpleasant effect whatever.

It would seem, however, from several accidents in France and England, that when the impregnation is carried a certain length, poisonous effects may ensue; and that the symptoms then induced are purely narcotic. The first case, which occurred at Paris in 1830, has been related by M. Devergie. In consequence of a leak in the service-pipe which supplied a warehouse, five individuals who slept in the house were attacked during the night with stupor; and if one of them had not been awakened by the smell and alarmed the rest, it is probable that all would have perished. As it was, one man was found completely comatose and occasionally convulsed, with