A.S. Lyman's patent air purifier for ventilating beds, desks, and rooms of all sizes, with pure air.

  • Lyman, Azel S. (Azel Storrs), 1815-
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A.S. Lyman's patent air purifier for ventilating beds, desks, and rooms of all sizes, with pure air. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    away their products where they can do no harm. The most filthy exhalations, consisting of the minute particles of decomposing animal and vegetable mat- ter, are collected by this charcoal, apparently as a fiter of magnets would collect the minute particles of iron floating through it in the air. Here, in these little cells, these impurities are decomposed, and here their elements are stored away. The most disgusting gases—the products of putrescence—are sulphureted hydrogen and compounds of ammonia. The first is always present where bilious and intermittent fevers, agues, etc., arc generated, and, hence, is sup- posed by some chemists, to be a principal cause of these diseases ; while, for the same reason, the sulphuret of ammonia is supposed by some chemists to be the prime cause of typus and typhoid fevers, etc. The charcoal seizes the ammonia, takes it into its little cells, and causes oxygen from the atmosphere to unite with it, and thus forms dilute nitric acid and holds it there simple sour water, a harmless substance. In the same way each cubic inch of char- coal will absorb enough of sulphureted hydrogen to instantly kill a dozen men, if Dupuytrcn and Thenard's experiments are reliable ; and combining oxygen with it forms a few drops of dilute sulphuric acid, which may all be taken with impunity by a single child. These dilute acids remain in the charcoal until it is reburned. According to Dupuytren and Thenard the l-1500th of this gas in air is instantly fatal to a small bird ; 1-1000th killed a middle-sized dog ; and a horse died in an atmosphere which contained l-250th of its volume. It docs the mischief by decomposing the blood in their lungs when inhaled by them. Finally, the air passes through the fragments of ice. Here it is washed as by a hail storm. The water on the surface of this ice is also a powerful absorbant of these impurities. It absorbs sulphureted hydrogen, and also deprives the air of any compounds of ammonia. Ammoniacal gas has a powerful affinity for water. Owing to this attrac- tion, a piece of ice, when placed in a jar of ammonia, is instantly liquified, and the gas disappears in the course of a few seconds. Davy in his Ele- ments, stated that water at 50°, when the thermometer stands at 29*8 inches, absorbs 670 times its volume of ammonia. According to Thompson, water at the common temperature and pressure, takes up 780 its bulk.—Turner's Chemistry, article A mmoniacal Gas. The air is also dried by coming in contact with the ice. By being cooled its capacity for moisture is lessened, and the moisture is deposited on the cold surfaces of ice even more abundantly than upon the pitcher of ice water. The following table shows the amount of moisture contained in one cubic Jbot of air when saturated, at different temperatures :