Death in Closed Vessels 



557 



Experiment C. August 19; temperature 22°. Linnet. 

 At 6:20, taken to 95 centimeters pressure; at 9:55, found dead. 

 Venous blood dark, without gas. 

 Lethal air: CO* 13.3; O* 3.7. 



Experiment CI. August 20; mountain sparrow. Placed at l l A 

 atmospheres. 



Lethal air: CO= 14.3; O* 3.4. 



The results of these experiments are grouped in the increasing 

 order of pressures in the following table. 



Table V 



If now we consider these results, occupying ourselves first with 

 the composition of the air which had become irrespirable — and the 

 preceding table makes this bird's-eye view easy — we see at once 

 that the hypothesis suggested as a heading for this sub-chapter, 

 far from being verified, is exactly opposite to the truth. The 

 greater the pressure, the less the oxygen of the air was exhausted, 

 as Column 7 of Table V shows. At 8.8 atmospheres, the highest 

 pressure I used in this first series of experiments, there remained 

 after death 17.4 per cent of oxygen. 



This observation, already strange, becomes absolutely aston- 

 ishing when we take account not only of the figure expressing the 

 percentage, but also the number, hitherto constant in our experi- 

 ments, which indicates the oxygen tension in the lethal air. We 

 saw in the first chapter that this number oscillates between 3 and 4. 



