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No Laughing Matter Historical profile No laughing matter Had it not been for nitrous oxide’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 Thomas Beddoes’ in Beddoes’ institution. Coleridge surgeries. With access to nothing day Erasmus Darwin) that his therapy Pneumatic Institution 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 Humphry Davy 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 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 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 Bristol, UK. leading engineer, James Watt. 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 oxygen 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 carbon dioxide 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 University of Edinburgh, 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 University of Oxford. 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 Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, 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 Hotwells 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.
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