Humphry Davy, Nitrous Oxide, the Pneumatic Institution, and the Royal Institution

Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol 307: L661–L667, 2014. First published August 29, 2014; doi:10.1152/ajplung.00206.2014. Perspectives Humphry Davy, nitrous oxide, the Pneumatic Institution, and the Royal Institution John B. West Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California Submitted 23 July 2014; accepted in final form 18 August 2014 West JB. Humphry Davy, nitrous oxide, the Pneumatic Institu- magnesium, boron, and barium. Davy is also well known as the tion, and the Royal Institution. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Phy- person responsible for developing the miner’s safety lamp. siol 307: L661–L667, 2014. First published August 29, 2014; There is an extensive literature on Davy. A readable intro- doi:10.1152/ajplung.00206.2014.—Humphry Davy (1778–1829) has an duction is Hartley’s (8). The biography by Knight (10) is more interesting place in the history of respiratory gases because the detailed and contains useful citations to primary sources. Tre- Pneumatic Institution in which he did much of his early work signaled neer (17) wrote another biography with an emphasis on Davy’s the end of an era of discovery. The previous 40 years had seen relations with other people including his wife and also Faraday. essentially all of the important respiratory gases described, and the Partington (12) is authoritative on his chemical research. Institution was formed to exploit their possible value in medical Davy’s collected works are available (6). treatment. Davy himself is well known for producing nitrous oxide and demonstrating that its inhalation could cause euphoria and height- Early Years ened imagination. His thinking influenced the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and perhaps we can claim that Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall near the extreme our discipline colored the poetry of the Romantic Movement. Davy southwestern tip of England. When he was 9 years old, his was also the first person to measure the residual volume of the lung. family moved away and he was put in the charge of his The Pneumatic Institution was the brainchild of Thomas Beddoes, godfather, John Tonkin, who was an apothecary-surgeon. Davy who had trained in Edinburgh under Joseph Black, who discovered did not excel at school and always regarded himself as basi- carbon dioxide. Later Davy moved to the Royal Institution in London cally self-educated. After his father’s death, Davy was appren- formed, in part, to diffuse the knowledge of scientific discoveries to ticed to John Borlase, another apothecary-surgeon. This man the general public. Davy was a brilliant lecturer and developed an had a dispensary and Davy liked to tinker there with chemicals. enthusiastic following. In addition he exploited the newly described It is said that his friends complained that he might blow them electric battery to discover several new elements. He also invented the all up. safety lamp in response to a series of devastating explosions in coal When Davy was 19 read he Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire mines. Ultimately Davy became president of the Royal Society, a remarkable honor for somebody with such humble origins. Another of de chimie, probably in an English translation. The book was his important contributions was to introduce Michael Faraday (1791– considered revolutionary at the time because of its clear clas- 1867) to science. Faraday became one of the most illustrious British sification of the known elements. Davy was particularly inter- scientists of all time. ested in Lavoisier’s views on heat, which was regarded there as a weightless element called “caloric.” In a well-known exper- anesthesia; alkaline earths; Thomas Beddoes; Count Rumford; Mi- iment, Davy took two pieces of ice and rubbed them together chael Faraday to produce water by melting. He saw this as disproving Lavoisier’s theory because no substance could have been added in the process. HUMPHRY DAVY (1778–1829) (Fig. 1) was a celebrated chemist The next chapter in Davy’s life begins with the oft-quoted who has a special place in the history of respiratory physiol- anecdote that Davis Giddy (who later changed his name to ogy. He was the first person to describe the properties of Gilbert), a well-connected man with scientific interests, saw nitrous oxide, which is still extensively used in anesthesia. Davy swinging on the half-gate of Dr. Borlase’s house. Gilbert Shortly after its discovery, the gas was also used as a stimulant was impressed by the young boy, allowed him to use his resulting in euphoria and heightened imagination. Davy was an library, and introduced him to a Dr. Edwards who lectured in early member of the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, UK, chemistry at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Edwards which is of historical interest because it was one of the first encouraged Davy to use the equipment in his laboratory and organizations formed to exploit the newly discovered respira- this was a catalyst in Davy’s developing a love of science. tory gases in medical practice. In addition, Davy was also one In addition to his scientific interests, Davy enjoyed literature of the first professors at the Royal Institution in London in and painting. He wrote several poems at this time and at least 1801. This was an important innovation that was developed, in three of his paintings still survive. One of his poems, written part, to inform the general public about scientific research, and when he was only 17, presages his scientific curiosity. Here is it still thrives today. As a research chemist, Davy was remark- one stanza: ably productive. He discovered the elements sodium, potas- To scan the laws of Nature, to explore sium, and calcium, and he was the first person to isolate The tranquil reign of mild philosophy; Or on Newtonian wings sublime to soar Thro’ the bright regions of the starry sky (14) Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: J. B. West, UCSD Dept. of Medicine 0623A, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0623 (e-mail: Five of his early poems were included in an anthology of [email protected]). Bristol poets (9). Although he moved on from writing poetry, http://www.ajplung.org 1040-0605/14 Copyright © 2014 the American Physiological Society L661 Perspectives L662 HUMPHRY DAVY the possible medical uses of respiratory gases. She suggested that he should replace the laboratory with a medical pneumatic institution. She tried to persuade the eminent Sir Joseph Banks to give financial support, but he declined partly because of scientific concerns and partly because he objected to Beddoes’ support of the French revolution. Beddoes corresponded with Priestley and the physician Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) and was also familiar with the Wedgwoods and other members of the Lunar Society in Birmingham. A grateful patient gave him £1,500, and Thomas Wedgwood added £1,000 with the rather cynical note “that it was worthwhile expending the sum sub- scribed in order to assure us that elastic fluids would not be serviceable as medicine” (15). James Watt (1738–1819), famous for his work on the development of the steam engine, was also interested because his son had pulmonary tuberculosis and he thought that the new gases might be helpful in his cure. As a result, Watt built a portable gas chamber for some of the experiments. The Insti- tution was set up in Dowry Square, Bristol (Fig. 3) and by April 1800 had several inpatients and some 80 outpatients (8). Davy moved to Bristol in 1799 as Beddoes’ assistant, and soon the Institution was a focus of a number of interesting people including Southey and Coleridge as mentioned earlier. For example, Davy was in correspondence with William Word- sworth, who asked for Davy’s opinion on his poems. Davy was soon working hard in the laboratory. One of his first interests was the oxides of nitrogen. Here he took consid- erable risks because one of the gases he inhaled was nitric oxide, which, because of its combination with water to form nitrous and then nitric acid, was potentially very dangerous. Fig. 1. Sir Humphry Davy, Bt (1778–1829). By Sir Thomas Lawrence. ©National Portrait Gallery, London. By permission. However, he soon began experiments with nitrous oxide (N2O), which had previously been prepared by Priestley. His initial experiments were done by adding nitric acid to zinc but Davy maintained strong literary connections and had friendships with eminent poets of the Romantic Movement including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. His influence on Wordsworth has been documented (9). The Pneumatic Institution This interesting organization was formed to exploit the use of the recently discovered respiratory gases for medical practice. Davy joined the Institution in October 1798; this date emphasizes the very rapid progress in the discovery of the respiratory gases. To recap, Joseph Black had discovered carbon dioxide in 1756 and this was soon followed by the work of Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, and Henry Cavendish, who together not only discovered oxygen but clearly elucidated the roles of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen in respiration. So in the space of just 42 years these critically important gases were discovered and understood, and it was argued that now the time had come to investigate their use in medical practice. The Pneumatic Institution was the brainchild of Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) (Fig. 2). This colorful man had studied under Joseph Black in Edinburgh and then continued his work in London and Oxford. As a reader in chemistry at Oxford his lectures were extremely popular. In fact he claimed that the classes were the largest assembled in the university since the 13th century! Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, visited Bed- Fig.

Load more