Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air Part 4

If a quant.i.ty of inflammable air be contained in a gla.s.s vessel standing in water, and have been generated very fast, it will smell even through the water, and this water will also soon become covered with a thin film, a.s.suming all the different colours. If the inflammable air have been generated from iron, this matter will appear to be a red okre, or the earth of iron, as I have found by collecting a considerable quant.i.ty of it; and if it have been generated from zinc, it is a whitish substance, which I suppose to be the calx of the metal. It likewise settles to the bottom of the vessel, and when the water is stirred, it has very much the appearance of wool. When water is once impregnated in this manner, it will continue to yield this sc.u.m for a considerable time after the air is removed from it. This I have often observed with respect to iron.

Inflammable air, made by a violent effervescence, I have observed to be much more inflammable than that which is made by a weak effervescence, whether the water or the oil of vitriol prevailed in the mixture. Also the offensive smell was much stronger in the former case than in the latter. The greater degree of inflammability appeared by the greater number of successive explosions, when a candle was presented to the neck of a phial filled with it.[4] It is possible, however, that this diminution of inflammability may, in some measure, arise from the air continuing so much longer in the bladder when it is made very slowly; though I think the difference is too great for this cause to have produced the whole of it. It may, perhaps, deserve to be tried by a different process, without a bladder.

Inflammable air is not thought to be miscible with water, and when kept many months, seems, in general, to be as inflammable as ever. Indeed, when it is extracted from vegetable or animal substances, a part of it will be imbibed by the water in which it stands; but it may be presumed, that in this case, there was a mixture of fixed air extracted from the substance along with it. I have indisputable evidence, however, that inflammable air, standing long in water, has actually lost all its inflammability, and even come to extinguish flame much more than that air in which candles have burned out. After this change it appears to be greatly diminished in quant.i.ty, and it still continues to kill animals the moment they are put into it.

This very remarkable fact first occurred to my observation on the twenty-fifth of May 1771, when I was examining a quant.i.ty of inflammable air, which had been made from zinc, near three years before. Upon this, I immediately set by a common quart-bottle filled with inflammable air from iron, and another equal quant.i.ty from zinc; and examining them in the beginning of December following, that from the iron was reduced near one half in quant.i.ty, if I be not greatly mistaken; for I found the bottle half full of water, and I am pretty clear that it was full of air when it was set by. That which had been produced from zinc was not altered, and filled the bottle as at first.

Another instance of this kind occurred to my observation on the 19th of June 1772, when a quant.i.ty of air, half of which had been inflammable air from zinc, and half air in which mice had died, and which had been put together the 30th of July 1771, appeared not to be in the least inflammable, but extinguished flame, as much as any kind of air that I had ever tried. I think that, in all, I have had four instances of inflammable air losing its inflammability, while it stood in water.

Though air tainted with putrefaction extinguishes flame, I have not found that animals or vegetables putrefying in inflammable air render it less inflammable. But one quant.i.ty of inflammable air, which I had set by in May 1771, along with the others above mentioned, had had some putrid flesh in it; and this air had lost its inflammability, when it was examined at the same time with the other in the December following.

The bottle in which this air had been kept, smelled exactly like very strong Harrogate water. I do not think that any person could have distinguished them.

I have made plants grow for several months in inflammable air made from zinc, and also from oak; but, though the plants grew pretty well, the air still continued inflammable. The former, indeed, was not so highly inflammable as when it was fresh made, but the latter was quite as much so; and the diminution of inflammability in the former case, I attribute to some other cause than the growth of the plant.

No kind of air, on which I have yet made the experiment, will conduct electricity; but the colour of an electric spark is remarkably different in some different kinds of air, which seems to shew that they are not equally good non-conductors. In fixed air, the electric spark is exceedingly white; but in inflammable air it is of a purple, or red colour. Now, since the most vigorous sparks are always the whitest, and, in other cases, when the spark is red, there is reason to think that the electric matter pa.s.ses with difficulty, and with less rapidity: it is possible that the inflammable air may contain particles which conduct electricity, though very imperfectly; and that the whiteness of the spark in the fixed air, may be owing to its meeting with no conducting particles at all. When an explosion was made in a quant.i.ty of inflammable air, it was a little white in the center, but the edges of it were still tinged with a beautiful purple. The degree of whiteness in this case was probably owing to the electric matter rus.h.i.+ng with more violence in an explosion than in a common spark.

Inflammable air kills animals as suddenly as fixed air, and, as far as can be perceived, in the same manner, throwing them into convulsions, and thereby occasioning present death. I had imagined that, by animals dying in a quant.i.ty of inflammable air, it would in time become less noxious; but this did not appear to be the case; for I killed great number of mice in a small quant.i.ty of this air; which I kept several months for this purpose, without its being at all sensibly mended; the last, as well as the first mouse, dying the moment it was put into it.

I once imagined that, since fixed and inflammable air are the reverse of one another, in several remarkable properties, a mixture of them would make common air; and while I made the mixtures in bladders, I imagined that I had succeeded in my attempt; but I have since found that thin bladders do not sufficiently prevent the air that is contained in them from mixing with the external air. Also corks will not sufficiently confine different kinds of air, unless the phials in which they are confined be set with their mouths downwards, and a little water lie in the necks of them, which, indeed, is equivalent to the air standing in vessels immersed in water. In this manner, however, I have kept different kinds of air for several years.

Whatever methods I took to promote the mixture of fixed and inflammable air, they were all ineffectual. I think it my duty, however, to recite the issue of an experiment or two of this kind, in which equal mixtures of these two kinds of air had stood near three years, as they seem to shew that they had in part affected one another, in that long s.p.a.ce of time. These mixtures I examined April 27, 1771. One of them had stood in quicksilver, and the other in a corked phial, with a little water in it.

On opening the latter in water, the water instantly rushed in, and filled almost half of the phial, and very little more was absorbed afterwards. In this case the water in the phial had probably absorbed a considerable part of the fixed air, so that the inflammable air was exceedingly rarefied; and yet the whole quant.i.ty that must have been rendered non-elastic was ten times more than the bulk of the water, and it has not been found that water can contain much more than its own bulk of fixed air. But in other cases I have found the diminution of a quant.i.ty of air, and especially of fixed air, to be much greater than I could well account for by any kind of absorption.

The phial which had stood immersed in quicksilver had lost very little of its original quant.i.ty of air; and being now opened in water, and left there, along with another phial, which was just then filled, as this had been three years before, viz. with air half inflammable and half fixed, I observed that the quant.i.ty of both was diminished, by the absorption of the water, in the same proportion.

Upon applying a candle to the mouths of the phials which had been kept three years, that which had stood in quicksilver went off at one explosion, exactly as it would have done if there had been a mixture of common air with the inflammable. As a good deal depends upon the apertures of the vessels in which the inflammable air is mixed, I mixed the two kinds of air in equal proportions in the same phial, and after letting the phial stand some days in water, that the fixed air might be absorbed, I applied a candle to it, but it made ten or twelve explosions (stopping the phial after each of them) before the inflammable matter was exhausted.

The air which had been confined in the corked phial exploded in the very same manner as an equal and fresh mixture of the two kinds of air in the same phial, the experiment being made as soon as the fixed air was absorbed, as before; so that in this case, the two kinds of air did not seem to have affected one another at all.

Considering inflammable air as air united to, or loaded with phlogiston, I exposed to it several substances, which are said to have a near affinity with phlogiston, as oil of vitriol, and spirit of nitre (the former for above a month), but without making any sensible alteration in it.

I observed, however, that inflammable air, mixed with the fumes of smoking spirit of nitre, goes off at one explosion, exactly like a mixture of half common and half inflammable air. This I tried several times, by throwing the inflammable air into a phial full of spirit of nitre, with its mouth immersed in a bason containing some of the same spirit, and then applying the flame of a candle to the mouth of the phial, the moment that it was uncovered, after it had been taken out of the bason.

This remarkable effect I hastily concluded to have arisen from the inflammable air having been in part deprived of its inflammability, by means of the stronger affinity, which the spirit of nitre had with phlogiston, and therefore I imagined that by letting them stand longer in contact, and especially by agitating them strongly together, I should deprive the air of all its inflammability; but neither of these operations succeeded, for still the air was only exploded at once, as before.

And lastly, when I pa.s.sed a quant.i.ty of inflammable air, which had been mixed with the fumes of spirit of nitre, through a body of water, and received it in another vessel, it appeared not to have undergone any change at all, for it went off in several successive explosions, like the purest inflammable air. The effect above-mentioned must, therefore, have been owing to the fumes of the spirit of nitre supplying the place of common air for the purpose of ignition, which is a.n.a.logous to other experiments with nitre.

Having had the curiosity, on the 25th of July 1772, to expose a great variety of different kinds of air to water out of which the air it contained had been boiled, without any particular view; the result was, in several respects, altogether unexpected, and led to a variety of new observations on the properties and affinities of several kinds of air with respect to water. Among the rest three fourths of that which was inflammable was absorbed by the water in about two days, and the remainder was inflammable, but weakly so.

Upon this, I began to agitate a quant.i.ty of strong inflammable air in a gla.s.s jar, standing in a pretty large trough of water, the surface of which was exposed to the common air, and I found that when I had continued the operation about ten minutes, near one fourth of the quant.i.ty of air had disappeared; and finding that the remainder made an effervescence with nitrous air, I concluded that it must have become fit for respiration, whereas this kind of air is, at the first, as noxious as any other kind whatever. To ascertain this, I put a mouse into a vessel containing 2-1/2 ounce measures of it, and observed that it lived in it twenty minutes, which is as long as a mouse will generally live in the same quant.i.ty of common air. This mouse was even taken out alive, and recovered very well. Still also the air in which it had breathed so long was inflammable, though very weakly so. I have even found it to be so when a mouse has actually died in it. Inflammable air thus diminished by agitation in water, makes but one explosion on the approach of a candle, exactly like a mixture of inflammable air with common air.

From this experiment I concluded that, by continuing the same process, I should deprive inflammable air of all its inflammability, and this I found to be the case; for, after a longer agitation, it admitted a candle to burn in it, like common air, only more faintly; and indeed by the test of nitrous air it did not appear to be near so good as common air. Continuing the same process still farther, the air which had been most strongly inflammable a little before, came to extinguish a candle, exactly like air in which a candle had burned out, nor could they be distinguished by the test of nitrous air.

I found, by repeated trials, that it was difficult to catch the time in which inflammable air obtained from metals, in coming to extinguish flame, was in the state of common air, so that the transition from the one to the other must be very short. Indeed I think that in many, perhaps in most cases, there may be no proper medium at all, the phlogiston pa.s.sing at once from that mode of union with its base which const.i.tutes inflammable air, to that which const.i.tutes an air that extinguishes flame, being so much overloaded as to admit of no more. I readily, however, found this middle state in a quant.i.ty of inflammable air extracted from oak, which air I had kept a year, and in which a plant had grown, though very poorly, for some part of the time. A quant.i.ty of this air, after being agitated in water till it was diminished about one half, admitted a candle to burn in it exceedingly well, and was even hardly to be distinguished from common air by the test of nitrous air.

I took some pains to ascertain the quant.i.ty of diminution, in fresh made and very highly-inflammable air from iron, at which it ceased to be inflammable, and, upon the whole, I concluded that it was so when it was diminished a little more than one half; for a quant.i.ty which was diminished exactly one half had something inflammable in it, but in the slightest degree imaginable. It is not improbable, however, but there may be great differences in the result of this experiment.

Finding that water would imbibe inflammable air, I endeavoured to impregnate water with it, by the same process by which I had made water imbibe fixed air; but though I found that distilled water would imbibe about one fourteenth of its bulk of inflammable air, I could not perceive that the taste of it was sensibly altered.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] To try this, after every explosion, which immediately follows the presenting of the flame, the mouth of the phial should be closed (I generally do it with a finger of the hand in which I hold the phial) for otherwise the inflammable air will continue burning, though invisibly in the day time, till the whole be consumed.

SECTION IV.

_Of AIR infected with ANIMAL RESPIRATION, or PUTREFACTION._

That candles will burn only a certain time, in a given quant.i.ty of air is a fact not better known, than it is that animals can live only a certain time in it; but the cause of the death of the animal is not better known than that of the extinction of flame in the same circ.u.mstances; and when once any quant.i.ty of air has been rendered noxious by animals breathing in it as long as they could, I do not know that any methods have been discovered of rendering it fit for breathing again. It is evident, however, that there must be some provision in nature for this purpose, as well as for that of rendering the air fit for sustaining flame; for without it the whole ma.s.s of the atmosphere would, in time, become unfit for the purpose of animal life; and yet there is no reason to think that it is, at present, at all less fit for respiration than it has ever been. I flatter myself, however, that I have hit upon two of the methods employed by nature for this great purpose. How many others there may be, I cannot tell.

When animals die upon being put into air in which other animals have died, after breathing in it as long as they could, it is plain that the cause of their death is not the want of any _pabulum vitae,_ which has been supposed to be contained in the air, but on account of the air being impregnated with something stimulating to their lungs; for they almost always die in convulsions, and are sometimes affected so suddenly, that they are irrecoverable after a single inspiration, though they be withdrawn immediately, and every method has been taken to bring them to life again. They are affected in the same manner, when they are killed in any other kind of noxious air that I have tried, viz. fixed air, inflammable air, air filled with the fumes of brimstone, infected with putrid matter, in which a mixture of iron filings and brimstone has stood, or in which charcoal has been burned, or metals calcined, or in nitrous air, &c.

As it is known that _convulsions_ weaken, and exhaust the vital powers, much more than the most vigorous _voluntary_ action of the muscles, perhaps these universal convulsions may exhaust the whole of what we may call the _vis vitae_ at once, at least that the lungs may be rendered absolutely incapable of action, till the animal be suffocated, or be irrecoverable for want of respiration.

If a mouse (which is an animal that I have commonly made use of for the purpose of these experiments) can stand the first shock of this stimulus, or has been habituated to it by degrees, it will live a considerable time in air in which other mice will die instantaneously. I have frequently found that when a number of mice have been confined in a given quant.i.ty of air, less than half the time that they have actually lived in it, a fresh mouse being introduced to them has been instantly thrown into convulsions, and died. It is evident, therefore, that if the experiment of the Black Hole were to be repeated, a man would stand the better chance of surviving it, who should enter at the first, than at the last hour.

I have also observed, that young mice will always live much longer than old ones, or than those which are full grown, when they are confined in the same quant.i.ty of air. I have sometimes known a young mouse to live six hours in the same circ.u.mstances in which an old mouse has not lived one. On these accounts, experiments with mice, and, for the same reason, no doubt, with other animals also, have a considerable degree of uncertainty attending them; and therefore, it is necessary to repeat them frequently, before the result can be absolutely depended upon. But every person of feeling will rejoice with me in the discovery of _nitrous air_, to be mentioned hereafter, which supersedes many experiments with the respiration of animals, being a much more accurate test of the purity of air.

The discovery of the provision in nature for restoring air, which has been injured by the respiration of animals, having long appeared to me to be one of the most important problems in natural philosophy, I have tried a great variety of schemes in order to effect it. In these my guide has generally been to consider the influences to which the atmosphere is, in fact, exposed; and, as some of my unsuccessful trials may be of use to those who are disposed to take pains in the farther investigation of this subject, I shall mention the princ.i.p.al of them.

The noxious effluvium with which air is loaded by animal respiration, is not absorbed by standing, without agitation; in fresh or salt water. I have kept it many months in fresh water, when, instead of being meliorated, it has seemed to become even more deadly, so as to require more time to restore it, by the methods which will be explained hereafter, than air which has been lately made noxious. I have even spent several hours in pouring this air from one gla.s.s vessel into another, in water, sometimes as cold, and sometimes as warm, as my hands could bear it, and have sometimes also wiped the vessels many times, during the course of the experiment, in order to take off that part of the noxious matter, which might adhere to the gla.s.s vessels, and which evidently gave them an offensive smell; but all these methods were generally without any sensible effect. The _motion_, also, which the air received in these circ.u.mstances, it is very evident, was of no use for this purpose. I had not then thought of the simple, but most effectual method of agitating air in water, by putting it into a tall jar and shaking it with my hand.

This kind of air is not restored by being exposed to the _light_, or by any other influence to which it is exposed, when confined in a thin phial, in the open air, for some months.

Among other experiments, I tried a great variety of different _effluvia_, which are continually exhaling into the air, especially of those substances which are known to resist putrefaction; but I could not by these means effect any melioration of the noxious quality of this kind of air.

Having read, in the memoirs of the Imperial Society, of a plague not affecting a particular village, in which there was a large sulphur-work, I immediately fumigated a quant.i.ty of this kind of air; or (which will hereafter appear to be the very same thing) air tainted with putrefaction, with the fumes of burning brimstone, but without any effect.

I once imagined, that the _nitrous acid_ in the air might be the general restorative which I was in quest of; and the conjecture was favoured, by finding that candles would burn in air extracted from saltpetre. I therefore spent a good deal of time in attempting, by a burning gla.s.s, and other means, to impregnate this noxious air, with some effluvium of saltpetre, and, with the same view, introduced into it the fumes of the smoaking spirit of nitre; but both these methods were altogether ineffectual.

In order to try the effect of _heat_, I put a quant.i.ty of air, in which mice had died, into a bladder, tied to the end of the stem of a tobacco-pipe, at the other end of which was another bladder, out of which the air was carefully pressed. I then put the middle part of the stem into a chafing-dish of hot coals, strongly urged with a pair of bellows; and, pressing the bladders alternately, I made the air pa.s.s several times through the heated part of the pipe. I have also made this kind of air very hot, standing in water before the fire. But neither of these methods were of any use.

_Rarefaction_ and _condensation_ by instruments were also tried, but in vain.

Thinking it possible that the _earth_ might imbibe the noxious quality of the air, and thence supply the roots of plants with such putrescent matter as is known to be nutritive to them, I kept a quant.i.ty of air, in which mice had died, in a phial, one half of which was filled with fine garden-mould; but, though it stood two months in these circ.u.mstances, it was not the better for it.

I once imagined that, since several kinds of air cannot be long separated from common air, by being confined in bladders, in bottles well corked; or even closed with ground stopples, the affinity between this noxious air and the common air might be so great, that they would mix through a body of water interposed between them; the water continually receiving from the one, and giving to the other, especially as water receives some kind of impregnation from, I believe, every kind of air to which it is contiguous; but I have seen no reason to conclude, that a mixture of any kind of air with the common air can be produced in this manner.

I have kept air in which mice have died, air in which candles have burned out, and inflammable air, separated from the common air, by the slightest part.i.tion of water that I could well make, so that it might not evaporate in a day or two, if I should happen not to attend to them; but I found no change in them after a month or six weeks. The inflammable air was still inflammable, mice died instantly in the air in which other mice had died before, and candles would not burn where they had burned out before.

Since air tainted with animal or vegetable putrefaction is the same thing with air rendered noxious by animal respiration, I shall now recite the observations which I have made upon this kind of air, before I treat of the method of restoring them.

That these two kinds of air are, in fact, the same thing, I conclude from their having several remarkable common properties, and from their differing in nothing that I have been able to observe. They equally extinguish flame, they are equally noxious to animals, they are equally, and in the same way, offensive to the smell, and they are restored by the same means.

Since air which has pa.s.sed through the lungs is the same thing with air tainted with animal putrefaction, it is probable that one use of the lungs is to carry off a _putrid effluvium_, without which, perhaps, a living body might putrefy as soon as a dead one.