The experiments in the first Division of this Research, prove that
nitrous oxide when respired by animals, produces peculiar changes in
their blood and in their organs, first connected with increased living
action; but terminating in death.
From the experiments in this Division, it appears, that nitrous oxide
is rapidly absorbed by the circulating venous blood, and of course its
condensed oxygene and nitrogene distributed in the blood over the whole
of the system.
Concerning the changes effected in the principles of the impregnated
blood during circulation and its action upon the nervous and muscular
fibre; it is useless to reason in the present state of our knowledge.
It would be easy to form theories referring the action of blood
impregnated with nitrous oxide, to its power of supplying the nervous
and muscular fibre with such proportions of condensed nitrogene,
oxygene and light or etherial fluid, as enabled them more rapidly
to pass through those changes which constitute their life: but such
theories would be only collections of terms derived from known
phænomena and applied by loose analogies of language to unknown things.
We are unacquainted with the composition of dead organised matter; and
new instruments of experiment and new modes of research must be found,
before we can ascertain even our capabilities of discovering the laws
of life.