MANUFACTURE OF IRON AND STEEL. 
601 
country are not only inefficacious, but often absolutely 
dangerous, if made up in either of the others. One of the 
witnesses states that an Edinburgh prescription, containing 
a solution of morphia, made up in London, would involve 
the patient’s taking twice the quantity intended. On the 
other hand, a patient taking prussic acid under an Edinburgh 
prescription, made up in London, would be taking only half 
the quantity intended, the Edinburgh prussic acid being 
twice the strength of the prussic acid of the London pharma- 
copoeia. This is an evil which can be remedied only by the 
combined efforts of the medical authorities of England, 
Ireland, and Scotland, to whom the subject should, without 
delay, be referred.” 
ON THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON AND STEEL WITHOUT 
FUEL. 
By Mr. W. Bessemer. 
[Proceedings of the British Association .) 
Mr. Bessemer asserted that crude iron contains about 
10 per cent, of carbon; that carbon cannot exist at white 
heat in the presence of oxygen, without uniting therewith 
and producing combustion, that such combustion would 
proceed with a rapidity dependent on the amount of surface 
of carbon exposed ; lastly, that the temperature which the 
metal would acquire would be also dependent on the rapidity 
with which the oxygen and carbon were made to combine, 
and consequently that it was only necessary to bring the 
oxygen and carbon together in such a manner that a vast 
surface should be exposed to their mutual action in order to 
produce a temperature hitherto unattainable in our largest 
furnaces. With a view of testing practically this theory, he 
had constructed a cylindrical vessel of three feet in height, 
somewhat like an ordinary cupola furnace, the interior of 
which was lined with fire-bricks ; and at about two inches 
from the bottom of it inserted five tuyere pipes, the nozzles 
of which were framed of well-burnt fire-clay, the orifice of 
each tuyere pipe ffieing about three-eighths of an inch in 
diameter. These were so put into the brick lining (from the 
outer side) as to admit of their removal and renewal in a few 
minutes when they were worn out. At one side of the vessel, 
about half way up from the bottom, there was a hole made 
xxix. 77 
