Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Somebody who has made a
Speaker 1: few appearances on past episodes of the show is chemist
Speaker 1: Sir Humphrey Davy. He showed up in our episodes on
Speaker 1: Andrew Cross, John Cleves Simms, and Peter Mark Roget and
Speaker 1: I think maybe also a couple things that previous hosts did.
Speaker 1: Andrew Cross did some experiments involving Davy's technique of using
Speaker 1: electricity to extract metals from ores, and John Cleves Sims
Speaker 1: named Davy as one of his protectors in a proposed
Speaker 1: expedition to prove that the Earth was hollow. Although Davey
Speaker 1: did not think that the Earth was hollow, he had
Speaker 1: not really endorsed the those claims at all. Peter Mark
Speaker 1: Roge is most famous for his thesaurus, but he was
Speaker 1: also a doctor and he worked with Davy on some
Speaker 1: of his chemistry experiments. Our episode on Roje came out
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, and we mentioned that some of
Speaker 1: that work was with nitrous oxide or laughing gas. I
Speaker 1: have thought about doing an episode on Humphrey Davy every
Speaker 1: time he has come up on the show. Obviously, he
Speaker 1: touched a lot of things that we've talked on before.
Speaker 1: He just seemed like an interesting person. And then I
Speaker 1: recently stumbled across an article that was about this self
Speaker 1: experimentation with nitrous oxide, something that briefly came up in
Speaker 1: that Roche episode. So I wound up going on a
Speaker 1: hole down, a whole rabbit hole with that, and Davy
Speaker 1: wound up at the top of the to do list.
Speaker 1: So of course that means this episode is going to
Speaker 1: include some discussions and descriptions of substance use. Recreational nitrous
Speaker 1: oxide was not illegal when he was doing this, but
Speaker 1: it is illegal in some places today. And also this
Speaker 1: was an accidental two parter. Was really not expecting that
Speaker 1: when I went into it, which feels like a theme
Speaker 1: with my two parters lately. Today we will talk about
Speaker 1: his early life up through the nitrous oxide experiments, and
Speaker 1: then on Wednesday we will get into his other work
Speaker 1: that happened after that, which also was notable. Humphrey Davy
Speaker 1: was born in Penzance, Cornwall, on December seventeenth, seventeen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: To Robert and Grace Millet Davy. Robert was a wood carver,
Speaker 1: and in seventeen eighty four he also took possession of
Speaker 1: a family farm in Varfel, a couple of miles away.
Speaker 1: A number of sources, including Encyclopedia Britannica, described this as
Speaker 1: an estate, and that makes their life sound a lot
Speaker 1: grander than it really was. Robert was a freeholder, meaning
Speaker 1: that he owned the farm, and the family's ancestry did
Speaker 1: include some more affluent and prominent peace people on both sides,
Speaker 1: so they definitely had more wealth and influence than say
Speaker 1: a tenant farmer or a farm laborer, but their actual
Speaker 1: way of life was really more on the modest side.
Speaker 1: Robert died in seventeen ninety four at the age of
Speaker 1: only forty eight, and Grace inherited about fifteen hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of debt, and that was with an income of about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pounds a year. According to the
Speaker 1: Bank of England's inflation calculator, that would be about sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand pounds a year today or twenty thousand dollars or so.
Speaker 1: And as always these comparisons are very approximate, but this
Speaker 1: just was not enough to pay off that debt or
Speaker 1: to really provide for the family. That family included Humphrey
Speaker 1: and also four younger siblings, so Grace went into business
Speaker 1: with a refugee from France, someone who had fled in
Speaker 1: the wake of violence connected to the French Revolution, and
Speaker 1: they started a milliner's shop in Penzance. Humphrey was sixty
Speaker 1: when his father died, and a couple of months later
Speaker 1: he started an apprenticeship with apothecary physician Bingham Borlaise, with
Speaker 1: the goal of becoming a doctor himself and helping to
Speaker 1: support the family. His education up to that point had
Speaker 1: been kind of erratic. Some of it was paid for
Speaker 1: by his godfather, John Tonkin, who Humphrey also boarded with
Speaker 1: after the family moved to Varfell. Humphrey's teacher in Penzance
Speaker 1: had been cruel and, in Humphrey's opinion, not very interesting.
Speaker 1: For a while, Tonkin paid to send him to a
Speaker 1: different school in Truro, which seems to have been a
Speaker 1: better fit, but Humphrey didn't stay there for very long.
Speaker 1: So Humphrey had gotten pretty use to seeking out information
Speaker 1: about things that interested him on his own. Since Tonkin
Speaker 1: was an apothecary surgeon. That gave Davy access to some
Speaker 1: books on science and medicine, and he was a quick study.
Speaker 1: He was also avidly interested in hunting, fishing, and writing stories,
Speaker 1: so he also developed up to a reputation for idleness
Speaker 1: and for having a romantic streak. He'd been raised Anglican,
Speaker 1: but he leaned more toward having religious and spiritual experiences
Speaker 1: out in nature rather than at church. He was the
Speaker 1: sort of person who taught himself chemistry well enough to
Speaker 1: be able to question the conclusions of the people who
Speaker 1: wrote those textbooks. But he also liked to wander in
Speaker 1: the woods reading poetry when he was supposed to be working.
Speaker 1: It's truly like a magical Jane Austen Hero. Some of
Speaker 1: Davy's self study included reading Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's Elementary Treatise
Speaker 1: on Chemistry, which was published in seventeen eighty nine and
Speaker 1: translated into English in seventeen ninety. We have covered Lavoisier
Speaker 1: on the show before, and we ran that episode as
Speaker 1: a Saturday Classic in January of twenty eighteen. Lavoisier's work
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century was groundbreaking, and he's considered to
Speaker 1: be one of the founders of modern chemistry. Cuoisier was
Speaker 1: guillotine in seventeen ninety four during the Reign of Terror,
Speaker 1: but was later exonerated. Sources disagree on whether Davy read
Speaker 1: Lavoisier's work in English or in French. He reportedly learned
Speaker 1: French from a priest. This was another refugee, someone who
Speaker 1: had fled the Vonde region of France in the wake
Speaker 1: of counter revolutionary violence, regardless of what language that he
Speaker 1: read it in, though Davy disagreed with some of Lavoisier's ideas,
Speaker 1: particularly Lavoisier's assertion that oxygen was part of all acids.
Speaker 1: Lavoisier had coined the name oxygen from Greek and French
Speaker 1: words that roughly meant forming sharpness, and this was based
Speaker 1: on this whole idea that he thought oxygen was an acidifier.
Speaker 1: Today we know that it is not, and we will
Speaker 1: be returning to Davey's experiments with this later on. This
Speaker 1: self study also led Davy to a particular interest in gas.
Speaker 1: In the context of European scientific thought, the idea that
Speaker 1: air was composed of different gases was still relatively new.
Speaker 1: English chemist John Mayow had described what he called spiritus
Speaker 1: nitroarius in the late seventeenth century. Spiritus nitroarius was later
Speaker 1: known to be oxygen. The idea that air contained a
Speaker 1: mix of gases or different airs, some of which could
Speaker 1: burn and some of which could not, evolved and became
Speaker 1: accepted knowledge over the next century. By the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: scientists had isolated and named a number of different gases,
Speaker 1: and this had led to the development of a new
Speaker 1: scientific discipline known as pneumatic chemistry, which involved investigating and
Speaker 1: studying all these different airs. Lavoisier was a big part
Speaker 1: of this, as was English chemist Joseph Priestley. Priestley had
Speaker 1: started by studying carbon dioxide, which he called fixed air,
Speaker 1: thanks to the bubbles that rose in the fermentation vats
Speaker 1: that are local brewery. This came up recently in our
Speaker 1: episode on Johann Veeppa and the development of carbonated beverages.
Speaker 1: Priestley and Levoisier were both involved in discoveries connected to oxygen.
Speaker 1: Lavoisier started off calling it quote highly respirable air, while
Speaker 1: Priestley used the term deflogisticated air. The idea of phlogiston
Speaker 1: had been proposed by Johann Becker back in sixteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Phlogiston was believed to be a chemical that was contained
Speaker 1: inflammable substances, which was released when those substances were burned.
Speaker 1: Priestley had been trying to remove this so called phlogiston
Speaker 1: from atmospheric air when he found a gas that burned
Speaker 1: very easily, which is what he called deflagisticated air. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Lavoisier demonstrated that flogiston didn't exist and that the element
Speaker 1: needed for combustion was oxygen. Lavoisier and Priestley also studied
Speaker 1: how these gases were involved in human and animal respiration.
Speaker 1: They worked out the basic pattern of inhaling oxygen and
Speaker 1: exhaling carbon dioxide, as well as how plants could restore
Speaker 1: oxygen to the air. For example, Priestley discovered that mice
Speaker 1: that he had caught in his kitchen survived longer in
Speaker 1: a sealed container if they also had a little mint
Speaker 1: plant in there with them. He apparently had kind of
Speaker 1: a soft spot for these mice and figured out how
Speaker 1: quickly he needed to remove them from there so that
Speaker 1: this little child did not kill them. Dutch physiologist Jan Ingen,
Speaker 1: Who's also detailed how light was involved in this reaction
Speaker 1: in plants, outlining the basics of photosynthesis. In seventeen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: Samuel Mitchell, who also came up in our past episode
Speaker 1: on John Cleves Sims, wrote on what he termed gaseous
Speaker 1: oxide of azote. This was an nitrous oxide which Joseph
Speaker 1: Priestley had isolated in seventeen seventy two. Priestley is generally
Speaker 1: noted as the first to do this, but it is
Speaker 1: possible that there were earlier discoveries that weren't documented as well.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety five, Mitchell described this gas as having
Speaker 1: an anesthetic effect, but he also concluded that it was
Speaker 1: poisonous and a source of contagion, and he warned against
Speaker 1: inhaling it. So Davy read a paper that Mitchell had
Speaker 1: written on this in March of seventeen ninety eight. He
Speaker 1: thought Mitchell was wrong about this gaseous oxide of a
Speaker 1: zote being toxic. So, just to kind of clarify, like,
Speaker 1: this was research that had been evolving over about one
Speaker 1: hundred years, but in terms of like the specific gases
Speaker 1: we were talking about, Baby was learning about things that
Speaker 1: had been discovered within the last couple of decades. In
Speaker 1: his efforts to prove that Mitchell was incorrect. He started
Speaker 1: experimenting with nitrous oxide, including experimenting on himself, and we
Speaker 1: will get to that after a sponsor break. Before the break,
Speaker 1: we mentioned that Humphrey Davy had started an apprenticeship with
Speaker 1: apothecary physician Bingham Borlays in early seventeen ninety five, and
Speaker 1: that apprenticeship gave him more access to books and materials
Speaker 1: than he would have had otherwise, but this still really
Speaker 1: was not much. Bingham Borlays's apothecary shop had the tools
Speaker 1: and ingredients that were needed to mix and package medicines,
Speaker 1: but this was not a full chemistry lab by any stretch,
Speaker 1: and the only chemistry textbooks that Davy had were Lavoisier's
Speaker 1: Elementary Treatise, which you mentioned earlier, and William Nicholson's A
Speaker 1: Dictionary of Chemistry, exhibiting the present state of the theory
Speaker 1: and practice of that science its application to now aatural philosophy.
Speaker 1: The processes of manufactures, metallurgy, and numerous other arts dependent
Speaker 1: on the properties and habitudes of bodies in the mineral,
Speaker 1: vegetable and animal kingdoms, with a considerable number of tables
Speaker 1: expressing the elective attractions specific gravities, comparative heats, component parts, combinations,
Speaker 1: and other affections of the objects of chemical research. So
Speaker 1: Davy learned what he could and cobbled together a lab
Speaker 1: from what he could find around the house. A surgeon
Speaker 1: had given him an enema syringe and he used it
Speaker 1: to make an air pump. He used this to extract
Speaker 1: the gas from the air bladders in a seaweed called
Speaker 1: bladder wrack, which is common on the coast of Britain.
Speaker 1: He analyzed this gas and found that it had a
Speaker 1: similar composition to ordinary air. Davy also started trying to
Speaker 1: disprove Samuel Mitchell's conclusions about nitrous oxide being a toxic
Speaker 1: source of decay and contagion. He used a method that
Speaker 1: if Priestley had outlined to produce the gas, and then
Speaker 1: exposed mice to it to see whether it killed them,
Speaker 1: which it did not. He also exposed meat to it
Speaker 1: to see if that made the meat decay faster, which
Speaker 1: again it did not, and then he did the same
Speaker 1: with open wounds to see if the nitrous oxide seemed
Speaker 1: to induce some kind of infection. Probably not surprising at
Speaker 1: this point, it did not, and then he cautiously tried
Speaker 1: breathing in some of it, which had no apparent ill effect.
Speaker 1: These and other experiments started attracting the attention of other
Speaker 1: people in Cornwall. One was Scottish inventor James Watt, who
Speaker 1: had introduced an improvement to the steam engine in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six, developing the first truly efficient steam engine. James's son, Gregory,
Speaker 1: had started boarding in the Davy home in Penzance in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety seven, and he and Humphrey became close friends.
Speaker 1: Gregory had tuberculosis free wondered whether any of the gases
Speaker 1: being studied might help him recover. Another was Davy's Giddy,
Speaker 1: who later married agronomist Marianne Gilberton changed his last name
Speaker 1: to Hers. Giddy was a member of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: and High Sheriff of Cornwall. When he heard about Davy's
Speaker 1: work and his aptitude for chemistry, Giddy allowed him to
Speaker 1: use his laboratory and loaned him books and other materials,
Speaker 1: and helped introduce him to other people. James Watt and
Speaker 1: Davy's Giddy eventually connected Davy to physician and chemist Thomas Beddows,
Speaker 1: who had previously been a reader in chemistry at Oxford.
Speaker 1: None of Bettos's lecture notes have survived until today, but
Speaker 1: he seems to have been very popular and knowledgeable. There
Speaker 1: was some controversy in his background. Though he had been
Speaker 1: a strong supporter of the French Revolution in its early years,
Speaker 1: and while he saw the violence that grew into the
Speaker 1: Reign of Terror a antithetical to the Revolution's goals, he
Speaker 1: was still branded as a Jacobin. He butted heads with
Speaker 1: the administration at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and according
Speaker 1: to some accounts, he was eventually forced out of his position.
Speaker 1: He was also an advocate for social and healthcare reform,
Speaker 1: seeing things like ignorance, drunkenness, and a lack of education
Speaker 1: as sources of illness, but that also meant that he
Speaker 1: tended to blame sick people for their own condition, framing
Speaker 1: them as lazy and stupid. As Humphrey Davy was experimenting
Speaker 1: with gases and his cobbled together chemistry lab, Bedos was
Speaker 1: pursuing the idea of medicine through chemistry. In particular, he
Speaker 1: thought some of these newly discovered gases might offer a
Speaker 1: way to treat illnesses. He used an apparatus designed by
Speaker 1: James Watt for some of these experiments. James Watt's son, Gregory,
Speaker 1: who we just said was friends with Humphrey, had also
Speaker 1: been one of Bedo's patients. Bedos also raised money to
Speaker 1: start a hospital, and in October of seventeen ninety eight
Speaker 1: he hired Humphrey Davy to be its medical superintendent. Davy
Speaker 1: was not a doctor and was also nineteen. This put
Speaker 1: an end to Davy's apprenticeship in medicine, something his godfather,
Speaker 1: John Tonkin, was really upset about. Tonkin had expected Davy
Speaker 1: to follow a respectable path to being a physician, and
Speaker 1: he thought Bedos was kind of a quack. To be clear,
Speaker 1: Bedos was genuine in his belief that inhaled gases could
Speaker 1: treat illnesses, especially tuberculosis, but he was mostly incorrect. Among
Speaker 1: other things, he thought that rosy cheeks, which were common
Speaker 1: in tuberculosis patients, were caused by inflammation brought on by
Speaker 1: too much oxygen. He thought, maybe if they inhaled some
Speaker 1: other gas, it might restore the balance of the oxygen
Speaker 1: in their bodies. That's not how it worked. I also
Speaker 1: feel like there's probably a whole other story to tell
Speaker 1: about this guy. He was not who the episode was about,
Speaker 1: so I did not get that far into it. But
Speaker 1: Beto's Pneumatic Medical Institute opened in hot Wells in Bristol
Speaker 1: in the spring of seventeen ninety nine. Hot Wells was
Speaker 1: one of England's spa towns, like Bath or Brighton. Although
Speaker 1: Bath and Brighton had more luxurious reputations than hot Wells.
Speaker 1: Hot Wells was named for its naturally occurring wells and
Speaker 1: hot springs. There were some baths and hot wells, but
Speaker 1: the water from these hot springs was also consumed for
Speaker 1: its reported health benefits and bottled and sold in other
Speaker 1: parts of England. At the Pneumatic Institute, Davey started researching gases,
Speaker 1: including repeating some of his earlier nitrous oxide experiments, but
Speaker 1: this time on a larger scale and with gas that
Speaker 1: was purer than what he'd been able to produce previously.
Speaker 1: According to his timeline, He did a preliminary test on
Speaker 1: April eleventh, seventeen ninety nine. He heated crystals of ammonium nitrate,
Speaker 1: collected the gas and hydraulic bellows, and inhaled some of
Speaker 1: it to confirm that it was breathable. Then, on April sixteenth,
Speaker 1: in the presence of physician doctor Robert Kinglake. He inhaled
Speaker 1: three quarts of it from a silk bag. In Davy's
Speaker 1: words quote, the first inspirations occasioned a slight degree of giddiness.
Speaker 1: This was succeeded by an uncommon sense of fullness of
Speaker 1: the head, accompanied with loss of distinct sensation and voluntary power,
Speaker 1: a feeling analogous to that produced in the first stage
Speaker 1: of intoxication, but unattended by pleasurable sensation. After this, doctor
Speaker 1: king Lake took Davy's pulse and said that it seemed
Speaker 1: a little quicker and fuller. A second experiment with four
Speaker 1: quarts of nitrous oxide from a silk bag started like
Speaker 1: the first, but also caused quote a sensation analogous to
Speaker 1: gentle pressure on all the muscles, attended by a highly
Speaker 1: pleasurable thrilling, particularly in the chest and the extremities. The
Speaker 1: objects around me became dazzling and my hearing more acute.
Speaker 1: Toward the last inspirations, the thrilling increased, and the sense
Speaker 1: of muscular power became greater, and at last, an irresistible
Speaker 1: propensity to action was indulged in I recollect but indistinctly
Speaker 1: what followed, I know that my motions were various and violent.
Speaker 1: Within ten minutes of stopping his inhalation of the gas,
Speaker 1: Davy's state of mind was back to normal, but the
Speaker 1: thrilling sensation in his extremities lasted a bit longer. His
Speaker 1: self experimentation continued from there. Quote Generally, when I breathed
Speaker 1: from six to seven quarts, muscular emotions were produced to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. Sometimes I manifested my pleasure by stamping
Speaker 1: or laughing, only at other times by dance around the
Speaker 1: room and vociferating. After a number of experiments, Davey wrote
Speaker 1: that with small doses he had five or six minutes
Speaker 1: of exhilaration, but with ten quarts of nitrous oxide it
Speaker 1: lasted for two to three hours. Holly just made a face.
Speaker 1: That's so much nitrous oxide. Yeah, don't do this. All
Speaker 1: substances have risks, right, and repercussions Like he doesn't know it,
Speaker 1: but he's he's hurting his brain right. December twenty sixth
Speaker 1: Davy did an experiment that involved getting into a sealed
Speaker 1: box and breathing an astonishing twenty quarts of nitrous oxide,
Speaker 1: followed by twenty quarts of air an hour later, he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: I lost all connection with external things. Trains of vivid
Speaker 1: visible images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected
Speaker 1: with words in such a manner as to produce perceptions
Speaker 1: perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected
Speaker 1: and newly mode ideas. I theorized. I imagined that I
Speaker 1: made discoveries. When I was awakened from this semi delirious
Speaker 1: trance by doctor Kinglake, who took the bag from my mouth.
Speaker 1: Indignation and pride were the first feelings produced by the
Speaker 1: flight of persons about me. My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime,
Speaker 1: and for a minute I walked around the room perfectly,
Speaker 1: regardless of what was said to me. After Davy's state
Speaker 1: of mind returned to normal, he said to doctor Kinglake, quote,
Speaker 1: nothing exists but thoughts. The universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures,
Speaker 1: and pains. We will talk about some of Davy's other
Speaker 1: experimental subjects after we take a sponsor break. In addition
Speaker 1: to the opening of the Pneumatic Institute, a couple of
Speaker 1: other notable things happened in Humphrey Davy's life in seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety nine one is that he started publishing works of
Speaker 1: poetry in Robert Southey's Annual Anthology. While he only published
Speaker 1: a few poems during his lifetime, he wrote a lot
Speaker 1: more of them, often in the same journals that he
Speaker 1: was using to record his research notes. A lot of
Speaker 1: these poems really came to light for the first time
Speaker 1: in late twenty twenty three, thanks to efforts to transcribe
Speaker 1: all of his notebooks. This effort has involved the work
Speaker 1: of more than three thousand volunteers who have found literally
Speaker 1: hundreds of unpublished poems. Another moment in seventeen ninety nine
Speaker 1: was that the last of his father's debts were paid
Speaker 1: off and his mother was able to leave that milliner's shop.
Speaker 1: At the Pneumatic Institute, he did experiments using a lot
Speaker 1: of different gases, including some in which he almost asphyxiated
Speaker 1: himself in the process. The measurements involved these experiments required
Speaker 1: him to figure out the residual capacity of the lung,
Speaker 1: that is, how much gas is left in the lungs
Speaker 1: after a person had exhaled. His estimate was forty one
Speaker 1: cubic inches or zero point seventy two leaders, which was
Speaker 1: not correct. The average adult's residual lung capacity is more
Speaker 1: like three leaders. But he is the first person known
Speaker 1: to have tried to quantify this. But the nitrous oxide experiments,
Speaker 1: those were definitely the most famous or infamous of what
Speaker 1: Davy did in that lab and the words of author
Speaker 1: and publisher Joseph Kottle, these experiments quote converted the laboratory
Speaker 1: into the region of hilarity and relaxation. Kottle published the
Speaker 1: work of a number of English Romantic poets, including Samuel Taylor, Coleridge,
Speaker 1: and Robert Southey. You can say that suthy or suthy
Speaker 1: according to pronunciation guides. And some of these people that
Speaker 1: were published by Kottle became test subjects in Davy's nitrous
Speaker 1: oxide express At the institute, Davy and Coleridge became friends,
Speaker 1: with Coleridge describing Davy as a man who had been
Speaker 1: born a poet before converting poetry into science. When asked
Speaker 1: how Davy compared to the men of London, Coleridge answered, quote,
Speaker 1: why Davy could eat them all. There is an energy
Speaker 1: and elasticity in his mind which enables him to seize
Speaker 1: on and analyze all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences,
Speaker 1: living thoughts spring like turf from under his feet. Here's
Speaker 1: how Coleridge wrote about his experience with nitrous oxide. Quote
Speaker 1: the first time I inspired the nitrous oxide, I felt
Speaker 1: a highly pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole frame,
Speaker 1: resembling that which I remember once to have experienced after
Speaker 1: returning from a walk in the snow to a warm room.
Speaker 1: The only motion which I felt inclined to make was
Speaker 1: that of laughing at those who were looking at me.
Speaker 1: My eyes felt distended, and towards the last my heart
Speaker 1: beat as if it were leaping up and down. On
Speaker 1: removing the mouthpiece, the whole sensation went off almost instantly.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people who did this mentioned laughing
Speaker 1: or a sense of giddiness after inhaling nitrous oxide, and
Speaker 1: of course it is also called laughing gas. Coleridge inhaled
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide at the institute at least four times, with
Speaker 1: varying levels of effect. On his last visit, he said
Speaker 1: he at first thought Davy had given him regular air
Speaker 1: by mistake, but then quote, my sensations were highly pleasurable,
Speaker 1: not so intense or apparently local, but more unmingled pleasure
Speaker 1: than I ever before experienced. Peter Mark Roget, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, described feeling vertiginous than having a tingling sensation
Speaker 1: in his hands and feet, and then feeling a bit sleepy,
Speaker 1: but then he roused, and that was followed by delirium. Quote.
Speaker 1: I felt myself totally incapable of speaking, and for some
Speaker 1: time lost all consciousness where I was or who was
Speaker 1: near me. My whole frame felt as if violently agitated.
Speaker 1: I thought I panted violently. My heart seemed to palpate,
Speaker 1: and every artery throb with violence. If let us singing
Speaker 1: in my ears. All the vital motions seemed to be
Speaker 1: irresistibly hurried on, as if their equilibrium had been destroyed,
Speaker 1: and everything was running headlong into confusion. All of this
Speaker 1: was followed by racing thoughts, and about fifteen minutes after
Speaker 1: he had stopped breathing this gas, he felt like things
Speaker 1: were turned to normal. Overall, Reget does not seem to
Speaker 1: have been a fan of nitrous oxide, saying quote, I
Speaker 1: cannot remember that I experienced the least pleasure from any
Speaker 1: of these sensations. I can, however, easily conceive that by
Speaker 1: frequent repetition, I might reconcile myself to them and possibly
Speaker 1: even receive pleasure from the same sensations that were then unpleasant.
Speaker 1: I will say, having a bunch of confusion and racing
Speaker 1: thoughts does not sound pleasant to me. I have thoughts
Speaker 1: we could talk about behind the scenes. So over the
Speaker 1: course of ten months of experimentation, Davy tested nitrous oxide
Speaker 1: as a treatment for headaches, indigestion, and dental pain. And
Speaker 1: he just administered the gas to a number of test subjects,
Speaker 1: who wrote descriptions of what they experienced. Based on all
Speaker 1: of this work, in eighteen hundred, Davy published Researches Chemical
Speaker 1: and Philosophical, chiefly concerning nitrous Oxide or Deflegisticated at Nitrous
Speaker 1: Air and its Respiration. This book is five hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty pages long, and it details a whole series of
Speaker 1: experiments with nitrous oxide that did not involve people inhaling it,
Speaker 1: plus the accounts of his own self experimentation and the
Speaker 1: experiments with other human test subjects. This work was met
Speaker 1: with some skepticism and even ridicule outside of the lab.
Speaker 1: To some people, the whole thing was automatically tainted because
Speaker 1: of Bedo's reputation. In the words of James Watt Junior.
Speaker 1: His research was entirely dismissed by Royal Society President Joseph
Speaker 1: Banks for this reason quote he thinks Bedo's a Jacobin
Speaker 1: and opposes all Jacobin innovations. Even the purity of my
Speaker 1: father's principles does not help Bedos with the contagion of
Speaker 1: the connection. I apprehend the Secret Committee of the Royal
Speaker 1: Society regarded him as a lost sheep, and it also
Speaker 1: seemed like people reported far less dramatic effects from nitrous
Speaker 1: oxide when they tried similar experiments somewhere other than the
Speaker 1: Pneumatic Institution. For years, though, recreational nitrous oxide became something
Speaker 1: of a fad, one that would seen as harmless enough
Speaker 1: that at least two different magazines for Boys printed instructions
Speaker 1: on how to produce and inhale nitrous oxide. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century. There were also nitrous oxide parties, which
Speaker 1: were sometimes framed as scientific demonstrations, which took place at
Speaker 1: people's homes. Humphrey Davy also used nitrous oxide outside of
Speaker 1: the context of his experiments at the institute. He would
Speaker 1: sort of walk through town at night with this silk
Speaker 1: bag of gas and inhale it while he was composing poetry.
Speaker 1: Silk Bag of Gas would be a great album title.
Speaker 1: The response from some of the popular press was outright ridicule,
Speaker 1: with cartoons and pamphlets lampooning Davy's experiments and the people
Speaker 1: who participated in them. This was also the case for
Speaker 1: the nitrous oxide parties and other recreational uses of the
Speaker 1: gas which went on for decades after Davy's work at
Speaker 1: the Institute. For example, in eighteen ten, Cornish clergyman and
Speaker 1: poet Richard Polweel wrote a satirical drama in verse about it,
Speaker 1: called the Pneumatic Revelers in Eklog. Here's a sample quote.
Speaker 1: When I tried it at first on al in society,
Speaker 1: their giddiness seemed to betray inebriety, like grave mandarins, their
Speaker 1: heads nodding together. But afterwards each was light as a feather,
Speaker 1: and they everyone cried twas a pleasure, ecstatic to drink
Speaker 1: deeper drafts of the mighty pneumatic, as if by the
Speaker 1: wand of a wizard. Entranced. How wildly they shouted and
Speaker 1: gambled and danced. Doctor Syntax, who was a character in
Speaker 1: a series of satirical and comic poems by William Combe
Speaker 1: was depicted in an illustration of a laughing gas party
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty. I will say they were also like
Speaker 1: pamphlets and up and flyers and things that were advertisements
Speaker 1: for these scientific demonstrations that to me were almost hard
Speaker 1: to distinguish from the satirical cartoons about it. They also
Speaker 1: came off as a little comical to me. Uh At
Speaker 1: the same time as all of that was happening. Though
Speaker 1: Davy's experiments were interconnected with the evolution of English Romanticism,
Speaker 1: Davy's writing about the effects of the gas were influenced
Speaker 1: by the movement's focus on things like personal feelings and
Speaker 1: sublimity and beauty, and their experiences with nitrous oxide also
Speaker 1: fed into the work of Romantic poets like Samuel Taylor,
Speaker 1: Coleridge and Robert Southey. Davy also played a more direct
Speaker 1: role in all of this, beyond just his personal friendships
Speaker 1: with these literary figures. In eighteen hundred, William Wordsworth asked
Speaker 1: him to oversee the production and proofreading on the second
Speaker 1: edition of Lyrical Ballads, which was a collection of poems
Speaker 1: by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Decades would pass between Davy's experiments
Speaker 1: and the use of nitrous oxide as an anesthetic, which
Speaker 1: it is still used for today, and some descriptions of
Speaker 1: Davy's life and work characterize him as having missed out
Speaker 1: on or overlooked the potential of nitrous oxide in anesthesia.
Speaker 1: That's a little overstated, though Davy did write about nitrous
Speaker 1: oxide having a potential use quote in surgical operations in
Speaker 1: which no great effusion of blood takes place, and he
Speaker 1: and some of his associates consulted with at least one surgeon.
Speaker 1: But there were several obstacles to the use of nitrous
Speaker 1: oxide as anesthesia in seventeen ninety nine and eighteen hundred,
Speaker 1: which is when most of the experiments are happening. Part
Speaker 1: of it had to do with Davy's understanding of how
Speaker 1: the gas and blood circulation worked. He thought that when
Speaker 1: somebody inhaled nitrous oxide, it made its way into their blood,
Speaker 1: and that any blood loss they experienced would then dampen
Speaker 1: the effects of the gas. I don't think that's how
Speaker 1: it works, but I did not go diving into the
Speaker 1: physiology of this. It's more about that is why he
Speaker 1: did not think it was going to be very useful
Speaker 1: in procedures that involved a lot of blood loss, and
Speaker 1: that is why he specified that it might be good
Speaker 1: for procedures that had quote no great effusion of blood.
Speaker 1: And then, on a more practical level, the nitrous oxide
Speaker 1: that they were producing wasn't particularly potent, and it dissipated
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. It would have required just enormous amounts of
Speaker 1: it to really provide anesthesia for any kind of lengthy procedure.
Speaker 1: They would have had to just continually keep making it
Speaker 1: because it wasn't something that could be made and stored
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Also, some of the experimental
Speaker 1: subjects at the institute described responses to the gas that
Speaker 1: themselves sounded painful. It was not an across the board
Speaker 1: pleasant experience for everybody who tried it. Attitudes about pain
Speaker 1: were also a little bit different in the late eighteenth
Speaker 1: and early nineteenth centuries. Today, pain is recognized as having
Speaker 1: an important function as a signal that something is wrong,
Speaker 1: whether it's that someone has put their hand in scalding
Speaker 1: water or perhaps they have an infection developing in their body.
Speaker 1: This was also true when Davy was living, but doctors
Speaker 1: insurgents also saw pain as a sign that the body
Speaker 1: was healing or at least capable of healing. Pain also
Speaker 1: carried religious and cultural connotations. There was this idea that
Speaker 1: people who were in pain had done something to deserve it,
Speaker 1: whether they were aware of that or not, or that
Speaker 1: pain had been inflicted by God for a specific purpose.
Speaker 1: Of course, all of these beliefs are still around today,
Speaker 1: but not to the same degree that they were prevalent
Speaker 1: at this time. Doctors and dentists just didn't yet have
Speaker 1: a focus on preventing or reducing pain in the way
Speaker 1: that many do today. Past hosts of the show did
Speaker 1: an episode on the development of nitrous oxide use in
Speaker 1: anesthesia in twenty twelve. That was called Horace Wells and
Speaker 1: the Gas War, and we are going to have that
Speaker 1: as an upcoming Saturday Classic. We will also talk about
Speaker 1: Davy's life after nitrous oxide next time. Yeah. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: do you have listener mail? I do. This is a
Speaker 1: listener mail about an episode from a while back, but
Speaker 1: I really liked it. This was from Randy. Randy said,
Speaker 1: hello ladies, and happy Easter if you celebrate. I have
Speaker 1: been catching up on some archived episodes and just listened
Speaker 1: to your twenty twenty episode on Mirisaki Shikibu and the
Speaker 1: Tale of Genji. I thought i'd share how I was
Speaker 1: introduced to her and in part Genji, because I haven't
Speaker 1: really heard of anyone else talk about it. I was
Speaker 1: a fan of all the Carmen San Diego games as
Speaker 1: a kid, but my favorite was Where in Time Is
Speaker 1: Carmen san Diego. As the name suggests, it was a
Speaker 1: time traveling history version of the games where you stop
Speaker 1: Karmen from interfering with major historical events or figures. One
Speaker 1: of the figures you help is Brisaki while she is
Speaker 1: writing the Tale of Genji. It was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite levels in the game. As a budding history and
Speaker 1: literary buff the game introduced me to a lot of people, places,
Speaker 1: events that either weren't covered in my schooling or were
Speaker 1: glossed over. I always thought it was a shame that
Speaker 1: more people hadn't heard of it, let alone played anyway,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed hearing more about Mirsaki, and we'll be adding
Speaker 1: The Tale of Genji to my ever growing to be
Speaker 1: read list. I hope you are both doing well and
Speaker 1: I look forward to more episodes. Randy. Thanks so much, Randy.
Speaker 1: I think I have heard of Where in Time Is
Speaker 1: Carmen San Diego, but it's not something I've ever played
Speaker 1: and did not know that this was a part of it. Also,
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned in the episode on the Sale
Speaker 1: of Genji that what I read in college was like
Speaker 1: an abridged version that was still something like three hundred
Speaker 1: pages long maybe, but was really the first part of
Speaker 1: the story, which leaves off the whole resolution of what
Speaker 1: happens to Genji later in life. But it also means,
Speaker 1: if you want to read the Tale of Genji, it
Speaker 1: is a very long book, So I applaud anyone who
Speaker 1: takes on that effort. I never read beyond what we
Speaker 1: were reading in college, just because I haven't, So thank
Speaker 1: you again for this email. If you'd like to send
Speaker 1: us a note, We're at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the email address that you can use to
Speaker 1: contact Holly and me. You can subscribe to our show,
Speaker 1: I'm the iHeartRadio app, or wherever else you like to
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and we'll be back with the rest
Speaker 1: of this story on Wednesday. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.