Considerations on the medicinal use, and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes. Part II / by James Watt.

  • Beddoes, Thomas, 1760-1808.
Date:
1796
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on the medicinal use, and on the production of factitious airs / by Thomas Beddoes. Part II / by James Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    ( ft I trude ; the heat of the body is faid confiderably to in- creafe (a), fweat to break out over the whole body, and fatal mortification of the lungs to come on. Thefe appearances denote violent inflammation : animals have always appeared to me to fuffer extremely, foon after immerfion in unmixed oxygerte air. The human fpecies, I think, will be found to vary as widely in the manner in which this elaftic fluid affecls various indi- viduals as in any quality whatfoever. Some, I have obferved, not to be very fenfibly affe&ed by it when jefpired pure. To my own lungs, it feels like ardent fpirits applied to the palate ; and I have often thought I could not furvive the infpiration of oxygene air, as it is driven from manganefe by heat, many minutes. The production of inflammation is fully eftablifhed by diffe&ion, as others have found, and as appeared from the following experiment: — A large kitten was kept feventeen hours in a vefTel containing feveral cubic feet of air from manganefe, of which about eighty parts in a hundred might be-oxygene. This, and ano, ' ther kitten of nearly the fame fize, which had lived as ufual, were then differed, in my pre'fence, by Mr. Guillemard, of St. John's College, Oxford, who im- diately made the following minute of the appear- ances : — The lungs were of a florid red color in the 41 oxygenated kitten (A) ; in the other \B), they were pale ; the difference was very llriking, both in the n inflated and uninflated ftate ; the edge of one lobe in A was marked with livid fpots (as in mortifica- *< tion). The pleura was likewife evidently inflamed. The heart in A was of a florid red colour. The liver, (a) Girtanncr Antiphlogiflifchc Chcmic. p. 263.