THE SMOKE NUISANCE. 479 
sulphur, sulphurous and sulphuric oxides, carbon disulphide, sulphuretted hydro 
gen (rarely), ammonium sulphide and carbonate, water, large quantities of nitro- 
gen (from the atmosphere supplied below the grate), and, when thrown off from 
certain works, may contain hydrochloric, nitrous and nitric acids, or even metallic 
and arsenical fumes. 
The question as to whether these products can be considered a nuisance or 
not, has already been, in my opinion sufficiently decided in the affirmative by 
eminent legal authority. Permit me to draw attention to their chemical and 
physiological properties. 
Carbon. Dr. Knaufif (Virchow's Archiv. , band 39, p. 442,) confined ani- 
mals in a box into which the particles of a sooty lamp passed ; the animals were 
well fed and were healthy ; the charcoal passed into the lungs, and was got rid 
of by expectoration in the form of pigment cells. In a cat, charcoal particles 
penetrated in three days from the lungs into the lymphatic glands and to the 
pleura. Villaret confined rabbits in a smoky atmosphere, and proved the exist- 
ence of fine particles of carbon in the bronchi. These fine particles of carbon 
may, therefore, enter the lungs and remain there as sources of great irritation 
until dislodged, or become covered with epithelium, like the carbon in the lungs of 
the miner (miners' phthisis). There is also the objection to the mechanical ob- 
struction of the external pores of the body. 
Carbon monoxide, sulphurous oxide, and nitrous oxide are strong deoxidiz- 
-ers, abstracting oxygen from the softer tissues, and when absorbed into, from 
the blood. They may, therefore, be ranked as distinctively poisonous, the first 
being said to be diffusible through the pores of cast iron, and are all the products 
of incomplete combustion. Some carbon monoxide is given off even during 
complete combustion, though not nearly in the same quantity as under disad- 
vantageous circumstances. It likewise affects health by forming in the blood a 
new and fixed deleterious compound with the hsemaglobin. 
Carbon dioxide— one of the principal products of the complete combustion 
of ordinary fuel — is very readily dispersed throughout the atmosphere by means 
of the rapidly moving currents of air and the laws of the diffusion of gases. 
Again, it is one indispensable factor in the food of plants, and, being very solu- 
ble in water, is speedily carried into the soil by the action of rain or dew. Car- 
bon dioxide, when exceeding five parts in 10,000 parts of atmospheric air, is 
objectionable. It cannot be said to be poisonous, but is asphyxiating by replac- 
ing a portion of, or reducing the percentage of, the oxygen which should be 
present. Woodman and Tidy, however, claim that it is poisonous, and then 
state that " air contains ordinarily from 3 to 6 parts of carbontc acid in 10,000. 
* * * * The air expired (in a room) contains from 4 to 
5 per cent of carbonic acid. If the same to air be again respired, the additional 
quantity of carbonic acid expelled at each inspiration would gradually lessen 
until a total was reached of 10 to 12 per cent, and then no more carbonic acid 
^would be given off. An atmosphere under such circumstances must prove fatal." 
This last statement must undoubtedly prove true, but such circumstances 
