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  • In pictures

Laughing gas and the scientific pursuit of the sublime

Part science lecture. part public spectacle, thanks to chemist Humphry Davy the 19th-century craze for inhaling nitrous oxide rapidly spread from the science laboratory to fashionable salons and homes of the day, and onto the popular stage.

  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

  • Article

Drugs in Victorian Britain

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

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Images

  • Anaesthesia: Nitrous Oxide Cylinder, 1870
  • Anaesthesia: Nitrous Oxide Cylinder, 1939.
  • Adminsitration of nitrous oxide
  • Comparison: gas/liquid gaseous nitrous oxide
  • Gaseous nitrous oxide spray in use.
  • Keymed liquid gaseous nitrous oxide unit DS750
  • Liquid gaseous nitrous oxide closed probe in use.
  • Liquid nitrous oxide spray being used to treat
  • Researches chemical and philosophical: chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or dephlogisticated nitrous air and its respiration / By Humphry Davy.
  • Researches chemical and philosophical: chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or dephlogisticated nitrous air and its respiration / By Humphry Davy.
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