This gas is transparent and colourless; it has the property of
inflammability, and when set on fire in the open air, burns with a
bluish flame, and deposits a certain portion of sulphur. It is
distinguished by an excessively fœtid smell, which has been aptly
compared to that of rotten eggs. Its habitudes with other gases are
interesting and important; by admixture with _chlorine_, it immediately
undergoes decomposition, yielding its hydrogen, so as to form
_hydro-chloric acid_ (_muriatic acid_), and consequently depositing its
sulphur; with _ammoniacal gas_ it combines, and forms an
_hydro-sulphuret of ammonia_; when mingled with _sulphurous acid gas_,
the hydrogen of the former combines with the oxygen of the latter, and
the sulphur of both is precipitated; when passed over ignited charcoal
it is converted into carburetted hydrogen gas, and sulphur is deposited.
It is soluble in water, and the solution precipitates the different
metals from their saline solutions, in the form of sulphurets; a
property which at once distinguishes this gas from every other.
It has been long considered a very energetic poison, and it would, at
the same time, appear to be a very insidious one; for sensibility is
quickly destroyed by it, without any previous suffering. We are
acquainted with a chemist who was suddenly deprived of sense, as he
stood over a pneumatic trough, in which he was collecting the gas. It
would seem to act upon the nervous system through the medium of the
blood, in which it is extremely soluble. It constitutes the particular
gas of privies, and is the immediate cause of those accidents which we
have already described in a former part of this work, _vol._ 1, _page_
100; since the printing of which we have heard of the death of four
persons from emptying a privy at Brompton. This gas will be sometimes
developed during the imperfect combustion of wet coals[504]; and it was
probably owing to its presence, or to that of _carburetted hydrogen_,
that the accident arose which is recorded by _Mr. Sutleffe_ in the
_Medical Repository_. “He was hastily summoned to a neighbouring family
at bed-time, where he found a female domestic labouring under a shrill,
laborious inspiration; she had taken up from a good kitchen fire, a
panful of live coals, from which a sudden suffocating blast seized her.”