224 Scientific Labors and Character of 
the sight of the persons about me. My emotions were enthusiastic 
and sublime; and for a minute I walked round the room perfectly 
regardless of what was said tome. AsI recovered my former state 
of mind, I felt an inclination to communicate the discoveries I had 
made during the experiment. I endeavored to recal the ideas : they 
were feeble and indistinct. One collection of terms, however, pre- 
sented itself ; and with the most intense belief and prophetic manner, 
I exclaimed to Doctor Kinglake, “ Nothing exists but thoughts !— 
the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains !”* 
The impunity with which Davy had sustained these wonderful tri- 
als, emboldened him to attempt the respiration of the deadly gases 
from charcoal. His first attempt was made upon four quarts of car- 
buretted hydrogen gas, of which he made three inspirations. “The 
first inspiration produced a sort of numbness and loss of feeling in the 
chest and about the pectoral muscles. After the second inspiration, 
_ Post all power of perceiving external things, and had no distinct sen- 
~ sation except a terrible oppression on the chest. During the third in- 
spiration, this feeling disappeared,—I seemed sinking into annihilation, 
and had just power enough to drop the mouth-piece from my un- 
closed lips. A short interval must have passed during which I respir- 
ed’ common air before the objects about me were distinguishable. 
On recollecting myself, I faintly articulated, I do not think I shall 
die. Putting my finger on my wrist, I found my pulse thread-like 
and beating with excessive quickness.” Extreme giddiness, loss of 
memory, and numbness succeeded, with excruciating pain im the 
forehead and between the eyes, with transient pains in the chest and 
extremities. 
~ In these experiments, which we cannot but condemn for their te- 
merity, it is evident that Davy narrowly escaped being numbered 
among the early martyrs of science. Hehas finally died of apoplexy 5 
and we can scarcely refrain from believing that his constitution, which 
was so vigorous in youth, withered and decayed long before it reached 
old age, from the effects of these early i injuries ; like some tree of no- 
ble growth, which fades and casts its leaves, ere it reaches the au- 
imn, in a eee of wounds inflicted while in its vernal bloom. 
ad serene, and little has been either 
said or thought of the hardin of men of science. But they some- 
times encounter danger as real.as those which are braved in the field 
SS 
nee 
* Researches, 487. 
