The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes

Author:Richard Holmes [Holmes, Richard]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Cultural History
ISBN: 9781455114337
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-30T15:00:00+00:00

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Nitrous oxide was not without risks. It was considered a lethal gas by both Priestley and the American chemist Dr Samuel Mitchill.52 But Davy went ahead anyway. He heated crystals of ammonium nitrate, collected the gas released in a green oiled-silk bag, passed it through water vapour to remove impurities, then inhaled it through a mouthpiece while his assistant Dr Kinglake monitored his pulse rate.53 The immediate obvious danger was that the ammonium nitrate would explode at a temperature above 400 degrees; the other was that the first inhalations would kill him or permanently damage the linings of his lungs.

But Davy’s first experiment went superbly. After inhaling four quarts of gas, he experienced ‘highly pleasurable thrilling, particularly in the chest and extremities. The objects around me became dazzling, and my hearing more acute.’ The next day the entire experience appeared dreamlike, he could not recall his sensations, and only by rereading his laboratory notes was he convinced that the experiment had taken place at all.54

Davy frankly admitted the extraordinary first effects of nitrous oxide. He experienced strange ‘thrillings’, increased bodily heat in his extremities, giddiness, raised pulse rate and (carefully observed in a mirror) a facial flush or suffusion of blood so ‘my cheeks became purple’. He noted: ‘Sometimes I manifested my pleasure by stamping or laughing only; at other times, by dancing round the room and vociferating.55 He sent his first account to his Cornish supporter Davies Giddy in a letter of 10 April 1799. ‘This gas raised my pulse upwards of twenty strokes, made me dance about the laboratory as a madman, and has kept my spirits in a glow ever since.’56 Shortly afterwards he sent three rather more sober reports to the leading scientific magazine of the day, Nicholson’s Journal. These earliest experiments he also recorded in verse, partly to see how far his linguistic skills were affected, and also to explore whether the experience could be imaginatively described. In this case the poetry was itself a form of scientific data. The result was very bad verse, but surprisingly precise physiological information. He headed it ‘On Breathing Nitrous Oxide’.

Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire

Have I beheld a rapture-waking form;

My bosom burns with no unhallowed fire:

Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm

Yet are my eyes with sparkling lustre filled

Yet is my mouth replete with murmuring sound

Yet are my limbs with inward transport thrilled

And clad with newborn mightiness around.57

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