396 THE COMPOSITION OF EXPIRED AIR. 



acid, nietawolframic acid, or phosphowolframic acid. Only sublimate 

 gave at times an opalescence which, like the yellow coloration of the 

 Nessler reagent, pointed to traces of NH 3 . Neither could they succeed, 

 according to the method of Wiirtz, in obtaining a lime or oxalic acid- 

 free filtrate. The ammoniacal silver solution, according to Brown- 

 Sequard and d'Arsonval's method, failed to give the desired reaction, 

 remaining clear. They confined a man, clothed in his working clothes, 

 in a zinc cage for about one-half an hour, then allowed a boy and girl 

 to inhale the air from the cage. No ill effects, except increase of respi- 

 rations to 30 and 40 per minute, were noticeable. They had complete 

 negative results from inoculations of condensed fluid into animals. 



Lipari and Crisafulli, in 1889-90 (20), reported results which were in 

 accord with those of Dastre and Loye and directly opposed to those of 

 Brown- Sequard and d'Arsonval. They could find no organic principle 

 possessing toxic properties in the expired breath of healthy persons. 



Margouty, in 1891 (21), reported the results of experiments similar to 

 those of Hammond, and also of experiments in injecting fluid condensed 

 from expired air iuto animals. His results did not correspond to those 

 reported by Hammond, and there was no evidence of toxic properties 

 in the injected fluids. 



Haldane and Smith, in 1892 (22), published an account of experiments 

 in which an air-tight chamber, 6 feet 2 inches high, 2 feet 11 inches wide, 

 and 3 feet 11 inches long, was employed. Samples of air for analysis 

 were drawn off through a tube placed in the wall of the chamber, about 

 3 feet from the floor. When one person remained in this chamber until 

 the vitiation was from ten to twenty times as great as in the most 

 crowded and worst ventilated public buildings, there was no percept- 

 ible odor or sense of oppression. Air vitiated to such an extent as to 

 completely prevent a match from burning had no appreciable effect 

 upon the subject of the experiment. In other experiments hyperpnoea 

 and other phenomena produced were apparently due to the increased 

 proportion of carbonic acid. 



With rabbits weighing 1,800 grams, hematuria was produced when 

 the amount of boiled distilled water injected jjassed beyond 100 c. c, 

 and therefore 80 c. c. were taken as the maximum dose. 



To obtain the condensed liquid from the lungs, a man expired 

 through a Liebig condenser, in the jacket of which was flowing a 

 stream of ice-cold water. The condensation liquid was collected in a 

 flask, the bulb of which was buried in ice; and when the required 

 amount (80 c. c.) had been obtained, it was at once injected into the 

 subcutaneous tissue of the back. Six rabbits were thus injected, each 

 with 80 c. c. of the fluid, with no evident disturbance of health in any 

 of them; 80 c. c. to a rabbit corresponds to a dose of about 3 liters to a 

 man. They also repeated the experiments of Brown- Sequard and 

 d'Arsonval in supplying to the animals air charged with organic mat- 

 ter drawn directly from the lungs of other animals. Two large rabbits 



