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Home , Pneumatic Institution, Thomas Beddoes

Historical profile No laughing matter Had it not been for ’s subversion as a recreational folly, its utility as an anaesthetic could have been uncovered much earlier, as John Mann discovers ALMEIDA - WWW.CARTOONSTOCK.COM - ALMEIDA

44 | Chemistry World | June 2011 www.chemistryworld.org The terrified patient awaiting patients, and he claimed immediate Not surprisingly they were soon In short amputation in the Thomas success in the treatment of pulmonary participating – consuming both the Rowlandson cartoon (see below) was consumption as well as predicting (in  Nitrous oxide was first gases and other substances available an all too familiar sight in 18th century a letter to the great polymath of the used in ’ in Beddoes’ institution. Coleridge surgeries. With access to nothing day Erasmus Darwin) that his therapy began taking laudanum in 1797 more than alcohol and laudanum – a might also be of benefit to those in 1799, and its unusual because he was ‘tottering on the herbal tincture of opium – for pain suffering from typhus, diabetes, palsy properties were further edge of madness’, while Beddoes relief, the patient was as likely to die and hysteria. studied by helped Southey experiment with from shock as he was to succumb His pronouncements began  The euphoriant, ether during the harsh winter to post-surgical septicaemia. The to attract the attention of rich pleasure-giving of 1798. Southey was apparently introduction of diethyl ether in benefactors, and the Pneumatic effects of the gas were fearful that he had a heart defect 1846, and chloroform one year later, Institution was visited by Georgiana, expounded by the poets and claimed to be exhausted by ushered in the era of anaesthetics. Duchess of Devonshire and Tom Robert Southey and overwork, though in reality he was But it could have happened half a Wedgwood, son of the pottery probably a hypochondriac. century earlier if the anaesthetic magnate Josiah Wedgwood. Their  The adverse publicity However, Beddoes was quick properties of nitrous oxide had been personal and financial support surrounding its abuse to realise that his scientific appreciated by Thomas Beddoes allowed Beddoes to commission a as ‘laughing gas’ investigations needed better and his associates at the Pneumatic new gas generator from the country’s meant that its utility publicity than that afforded by Institution in , UK. leading engineer, . This as an anaesthetic lay testimonials from a handful Beddoes was one of the most new equipment allowed Beddoes to undiscovered until 1844, of grateful consumptives and interesting figures of the late 18th produce from mercuric oxide; and it did not enter two impoverished poets, so he century who combined eminence hydrogen from zinc and sulfuric general use until 1863 embarked upon a series of lectures. as a scientist, medical doctor and acid; and from red hot In particular, he began to expound essayist with great zeal as a social chalk; with each gas collected and his strong views about preventative reformer and political agitator. stored in oiled silk bags. medicine that centred around his Born in Shropshire in 1760, he had a belief that the air people breathed privileged education which included Poetic licence could influence their susceptibility courses in medicine and chemistry In 1795 the growing reputation of to disease. at the , the Pneumatic Institution attracted For example, in his experience followed by study for a medical the interest of two aspiring young butchers never died from doctorate at the . poets, Robert Southey and Samuel consumption. He therefore proposed He was made a reader in chemistry Taylor Coleridge, who had recently the introduction of inhalation at Oxford in 1788, and quickly moved to Bristol. Both were intensely therapy using air collected from the became one of the university’s most interested in the relationship vicinity of livestock. This novel yet popular lecturers. However, he between body and mind, and so it esoteric idea was never put to the became disillusioned by the religious was natural that they should wish test, since more exciting discoveries fervour and restrictions on study to observe the affects of Beddoes’ Before anaesthesia, followed the appointment of the under what he called ‘the shadow experiments on the levels of surgery was a painful and young Cornishman Humphry Davy of this ecclesiastical and scholastic perception of his patients. risky business as laboratory superintendent in 1798. institution’, and resigned his readership in 1792. The next 16 years of his life were devoted to attempts to use his chemical and medical knowledge for the benefit of mankind. His inspiration came initially from the work of and , who had both laid claim to the discovery of oxygen in 1774–1775, though the latter had more clearly demonstrated that the newly discovered gas was consumed when substances were combusted in air. Oxygen was to be one of the major gases of what Beddoes termed ‘pneumatic chemistry’. It became a key constituent of his therapy for diseases like consumption (tuberculosis) and asthma – where it was well known that a change of air could be beneficial. The first premises for his Pneumatic Institution were located in the area of Bristol, just down the hill from Clifton, once a thriving spa centre just a few miles down the River Avon from the more famous spa town of Bath. Beddoes’ earliest experiments involved administration

of oxygen to himself and to his IMAGES WELLCOME www.chemistryworld.org Chemistry World | June 2011 | 45 Historical profile

Dephlogisticated nitrous air Thomas Beddoes firmly wrote at once to his mentor Erasmus Davy, born in Penzance in 1778, was by believed that inhaled Darwin and his sponsor Josiah all accounts passionate about science gases could treat various Wedgwood about this gas that ‘acts by and had been carrying out chemistry medical complaints giving excitability or life.’ experiments (from making fireworks to smelting metals) from an early age. Pleasure and pain Shortly after his appointment, he and Southey was soon experimenting Beddoes relocated the Pneumatic with this new exotic substance, and Institution to new premises in Clifton wrote to his friend Tom Wedgwood in March 1799, and were soon offering that the gas ‘made me tingle in free ‘pneumatic treatment’ to anyone every toe and finger tip – it makes with consumption, asthma, scrofula one strong and happy, so gloriously and ‘obstinate venereal complaints’. happy’. While Beddoes tried to They were, not surprisingly, carry out a serious investigation of

PAINTING BY JAMES SHARPLES. BRISTOL MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY ART AND MUSEUM BRISTOL SHARPLES. JAMES BY PAINTING immediately inundated with willing the therapeutic benefit of nitrous volunteers. Despite long hours spent oxide, Davy embarked upon a with the patients, Davy embarked programme of self-administration, upon new research involving taking as much as six quarts of gas at ‘dephlogisticated nitrous air’ first a time – a whole bagful! described by Priestley in 1772. This The intense pleasure he always was in reality a mixture of nitric experienced led him and Beddoes oxide (NO) and nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonium nitrate, keeping the to promulgate the idea that discrete which Priestley had prepared by the temperature below 240°C. pleasure centres existed in the brain, action of nitric acid on iron filings. In April 1799, Davy sampled the and might be stimulated by nitrous Davy quickly managed to separate gas for the first time and reported oxide, thus freeing mankind from the gases by allowing the NO to a slight dizziness, followed by an the usual constraints of the body oxidise to nitrogen dioxide, which enhancement of his senses – ‘the and mind. Davy also suggested that he absorbed in aqueous base. The objects around me became dazzling pain could be diminished since he residual nitrous oxide was collected and my hearing more acute’. After had cut himself badly during one of in Beddoes’ oiled silk bags. He this he ran and leaped around in a Gillray’s cartoon of his self-administration sessions, and subsequently showed that it could high state of hilarity. Beddoes was Davy demonstrating had felt little pain. be more easily obtained by careful obviously hugely impressed by the ‘laughing gas’ at the Royal Unfortunately, it was the heating of the potentially explosive antics of his young associate, and Institution in June 1801 pleasurable side of nitrous oxide JEAN-LOUP CHARMET/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY PHOTO CHARMET/SCIENCE JEAN-LOUP

46 | Chemistry World | June 2011 www.chemistryworld.org pleasure than I had ever before of the gas with the strange activities experienced’, the serious scientific of those who took it – completely and medical work of the Pneumatic obliterated this positive suggestion. ANDY DINGLEY ANDY Institution was quickly overlooked. In fact, the medical benefits of Moving on nitrous oxide were mixed. Although Davy moved to the Royal Institution there had been some apparent in 1801 and began other research, success with palsy, alarmingly, in most notably his experiments with women the gas often produced electricity and electrolysis. These hysteria. Increasingly the Institution led ultimately to his isolation of the came to be viewed as a place where elements sodium, potassium, calcium, patients became the subjects of the barium, magnesium and strontium. ever more esoteric experiments of in 1807-8 Beddoes struggled on alone Davy and Beddoes. until his death in 1808, concerning This growing notoriety was not himself more and more with what he helped by Beddoes’ widely known called ‘imperfections and abuses in support (in the form of his many medicine.’ pamphlets) for Jacobin activities The Pneumatic Institution never and his outspoken opposition to recovered from the bad press it the war against Napoleon’s France. received at the turn of the 19th These views attracted the anger of century. And while nitrous oxide the government, which encouraged became popular with audiences of the production of various articles and new music halls and at ‘laughing gas pamphlets that satirised the activities parties’, its potential medical benefits of the Pneumatic Institution, were not pursued. promulgating the view that it was a It might have stayed this way if hotbed of iniquity and licentiousness. the US dentist Horace Wells had not To counter these aspersions, in tried it on his patients in December 1800 Davy produced a 600 page 1844. Even then, his initial success report of his experiments, under could not be reproduced when he the title Researches chemical and tried to demonstrate the efficacy of that caught the public’s imagination, 6 Dowry Square, Bristol, philosophical, chiefly concerning the gas to the medical profession. rather than the potential for pain the original site of the nitrous oxide or dephlogisticated It took another dentist, Gardner relief. The famous Gillray cartoon of Pneumatic Institution nitrous air, and its respiration. This Quincy Colton to properly establish Davy demonstrating ‘laughing gas’ to contained the first suggestion that the utility of nitrous oxide, and with an audience at the Royal Institution nitrous oxide might have utility his associates he successfully treated in June 1801 (opposite) shows the in surgery: ‘as nitrous oxide in more than 25 000 patients between amused and even derisory view of its extensive operation appears 1863 and 1866. London Society. capable of destroying physical pain, Subsequently, the 50:50 mixture With the likes of Coleridge Watt’s gas generator, it may probably be used with great of nitrous oxide and oxygen (known (now consuming vast amounts of used by Beddoes to advantage during surgical operations.’ as gas and air or Entonox) became laudanum) declaring that nitrous produce and capture a However, the growing notoriety of especially popular in obstetrics oxide had given him ‘more unmingled variety of gases the Institution – and the association – not least because it can be self- administered by the patient and produces powerful analgesia without loss of conciousness. The neuropharmacology of this analgesia – as well as the ability of the gas to produce euphoria and a relief of anxiety – are still poorly understood. It appears that nitrous oxide interacts with many of the neurotransmitter pathways, particularly those mediated by the N-methyl-d- aspartate (NMDA) receptors. Finally, in dentistry, nitrous oxide has largely been superseded by the use of local anaesthetics together with benzodiazepines (including diazepam and lorazepam) which produce mild sedation coupled with amnesia. This makes tooth extraction an almost pleasurable experience, although not necessarily a laughing matter!

John Mann is emeritus professor of chemistry, Queen’s University

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE MEDICINAL USE AND ON THE PRODUCTION OF (1795) AIRS FACTITIOUS OF PRODUCTION THE ON AND USE MEDICINAL THE ON CONSIDERATIONS Belfast, UK

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