This gas is developed by several chemical processes. We have just stated
that if, during the burning of charcoal, moisture be present, it is
evolved in abundance. It appears to be particularly fatal to animal
life. _Dr. Beddoes_ made many experiments upon the subject, from which
it would seem to destroy life by rendering the muscular fibre
inirritable without producing any previous excitement. In order to
decide this question, _Sir Humphry Davy_[505] ventured to take three
inspirations of the gas produced from the decomposition of water by
charcoal. “The first inspiration produced a sort of numbness and loss of
feeling in the chest, and about the pectoral muscles; after the second,”
says he, “I lost all power of perceiving external things, and had no
distinct sensation, except a terrible oppression on the chest; during
the third expiration, this feeling disappeared; I seemed sinking into
annihilation, and had just power enough to drop the mouth-piece from my
unclosed lips. There is every reason to believe, that if I had taken
four or five inspirations, instead of three, they would have destroyed
life immediately, without producing any painful sensation.”
CHLORINE—_Oxy-muriatic Acid Gas_.
This gas, which is now considered as an elementary body, has received
from _Sir Humphry Davy_ the name of _chlorine_, from the green colour
which characterises it. Its odour is so penetrating and insupportable
that it is impossible to respire it, even when considerably diluted with
atmospheric air, and yet it will support combustion. It discharges
vegetable colours, whence it forms the basis of various bleaching
preparations. According to the experiments[506] of _M. Nysten_, this gas
is not absorbed when respired pure, but appears to act only by
irritating the bronchiæ locally; and so energetic is its action, that
the animal dies before there is sufficient time for asphyxia to take
place from the circulation of black blood. When it is respired in a
dilute form, it produces a severe cough, and, according to _Fourcroy_,
it occasions a phlegmonic inflammation of the bronchial membranes. The
death of the ingenious and indefatigable _Pelletier_ was occasioned by
his accidentally inhaling a proportion of this gas; a consumption was
the consequence, which in a short time proved fatal. In the _London
Medical and Physical Journal for November, 1821_, a case of a person is
recorded who was poisoned by bleaching liquor.