Compressed Air; 2 Poisoning 747 



operation was repeated several minutes after the decompression, 

 two chemical analyses allowed me to determine the quantity of 

 the gases absorbed and given off in both cases. 



Experiment CCXCIII shows that although before the compres- 

 sion the dog had consumed in a quarter of an hour 4.89 liters of 

 oxygen and produced 2.99 liters of CO., after he had been taken 

 from the apparatus in the same time he consumed only 2.02 liters 

 and formed only 1.12 liters. Similarly, in Experiment CCXCIV, the 

 consumption of oxygen fell from 3.95 liters to 2.15 liters, and the 

 production of carbonic acid from 2.41 liters to 1.99 liters. 



The decrease in the production of carbonic acid through the 

 superoxygenation of the organism is indicated again by the study 

 of the numbers listed in Column 8 of Table XV. If we examine 

 Experiments CCLXXX, CCLXXXI, CCLXXXV, CCLXXXVI, 

 CCLXXXVII, CCLXXXIX, CCXC, CCXCIII, we see that some 

 minutes after the decompression we find in the blood only minimal 

 proportions of carbonic acid. And this fact is all the more remark- 

 able because, in the conditions in which the experiments were 

 made, carbonic acid had been stored up in the blood in consider- 

 able quantity during the compression. Now when the animal was 

 restored to the open air, this acid lessened to far below the normal 

 proportion; in Experiment CCLXXXIX, it fell to 10.5 volumes per 

 100 volumes of blood, although its regular proportion, before the 

 compression, was 44.5; in Experiment CCLXXXVI, the proportion 

 before the compression being 43.0, it became 69.4 during the com- 

 pression, and dropped to 9.9, 20 minutes after; in Experiment 

 CCLXXXV, the same figures were 40.8, then 92.5, and finally 14.8. 



It is quite clear then that, in consequence of the exaggerated 

 superoxygenation of the organism, carbonic acid ceased to be pro- 

 duced in the tissues, and to pass into the blood, or at least that these 

 phenomena were considerably slackened. This would have been 

 manifest even during the compression, if I had been able to keep 

 the animals in a current of compressed oxygen, to avoid the storing 

 up of the carbonic acid due to the confinement. Furthermore, the 

 experiments reported in Chapter II, in which we were dealing with 

 pressures which were rather low but were made with almost pure 

 air, showed, as we have noted, a diminution of the carbonic acid of 

 the blood (See Table XII). 



It appears from these data that the pulmonary ventilation would 

 be capable of removing from the blood much more considerable 

 proportions of carbonic acid than one would have thought, of al- 

 most exhausting, in a word, the bicarbonates and the phospho-car- 



