McWeeney — Cases of Carbon Monoxide Asphyxiation. 219 



becomes insufficient for tissue metabolism, the cardiac and respi- 

 ratory functions fail, and the patient dies asphyxiated. Experi- 

 ments have shown that when the atmosphere of a room comes to 

 contain two volumes of carbon monoxide per thousand of air, it 

 becomes dangerous, and when the proportion reaches four per 

 thousand, life is speedily extinguished. 



The Departmental Committee appointed some years ago by 

 the Home office to inquire into the manufacture and use of 

 water-gas and other gases containing large proportions of carbon 

 monoxide, referred in their Report, published in 1899, to American 

 statistics, as showing the danger of this substance. A table 

 prepared by Dr. Haldane, F.R.S., in the Appendix to that 

 Report, shows that with ordinary coal-gas the annual deaths in 

 England by gas-poisoning, calculated on a gas-distribution equal 

 to that of London in 1896, were three in number ; whereas the 

 deaths that occurred in Boston, U.S.A., during the same year, 

 would have amounted to 620, calculated on the same gas-consump- 

 tion, and in Brooklyn the number would have been 400. In Boston 

 the gas supplied consists of 90 per cent, water-gas, whilst in 

 Brooklyn the proportion is 97 per cent. Dr. Haldane goes on to 

 say : " From the table it is evident that by no possibility can the 

 conclusion be avoided that the distribution of carburetted water- 

 gas without any special precaution is enormously more dangerous, 

 or, to speak more correctly, less safe, than the distribution of coal- 

 gas. Roughly speaking, the loss of life arising in one way or 

 another — accident, suicide, or homicide — appears to be fully a 

 hundred times greater with water-gas in America than with coal- 

 gas in this country." It would appear that in 1886 there were 

 in Boston 29,554 consumers of ordinary coal-gas without accident. 

 In 1890, amongst 46,848 consumers of a gas-supply containing 8 per 

 cent, of added water-gas, there were six deaths from gas-poisoning. 

 In 1895 the consumers were 68,214, 90 per cent, of the gas was 

 water-gas, and the deaths were twenty-four. In 1897, with 79,893 

 consumers, and a gas containing 93 per cent, of water-gas, 

 the deaths were forty-five in number. Dr. Haldane, on 

 whose researches the Report of the Committee is mainly based, 

 further points out that the number of accidents referable to the 

 use of mixed gas would appear to increase approximately as the 

 ■cube of the gain in percentage of carbon monoxide. Thus, if the 



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