July 13,1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
37 
the child to go away, whereupon witness herself went 
out. He told witness to serve the customers; hut she 
replied, “There is no one here to serve,” and added that 
she would not go indoors without he accompanied her. 
She, however, at his request, went in; and in about two 
minutes, hearing a strange noise in the shop, she pro- 
needed there, and found her husband sitting in a chair 
insensible. Thinking he had fainted, witness sent foi a 
next door neighbour, who afterwards summoned a doc¬ 
tor ; but witness thought, before medical aid arrived, the 
deceased was dead. He had been for some time past 
troubled in business matters, and witness thought this 
had turned his mind. 
Mr. George Perfect, a retired chemist, residing a u 
Southsea, stated that he had known the deceased'for the 
past thirty years, and he was generally of a desponding 
•disposition. AVitness knew that he had recently had 
great trouble in pecuniary matters, and also in his busi¬ 
ness, which he purchased in beptember last. It did not 
come up to his expectations, and in consequence he 
showed considerable despondency. AVitness last saw 
him on Tuesday in London, where they had been trying 
to arrange his affairs, but they found they had gone so 
far that a trial was inevitable. He (deceased) was so 
•excited that at times he was incoherent, and displayed 
great absence of mind. Prom his last interview with 
him, witness did not believe he was in his sound 
Mr. AVilliam B. Smith said he knew deceased, but had 
never noticed any peculiarity about him. On the 
Thursday afternoon witness was called to the house, and 
found him in a chair behind the counter, breathing v eiy 
heavily. AVitness applied restoratives to the nostrils, 
but they were ineffectual, and deceased died about two 
minutes afterwards. As they were laying him. on the 
floor, Mr. Smith detected a strong smell of prussic acid, 
•and on looking round, he found the bottle produced, 
from which the smell proceeded, standing on the counter 
almost empty. ^ 
Dr. John Butcher, of Spring Gardens, said on lhurs- 
dav he was called to see the deceased, and on examining 
him found him to have died from taking prussic acid,— 
such a large quantity, he thought, as to produce almost 
instant death. , . , 
The Coroner, in summing up, characterized the case 
as a lamentable one, and left the question for them deter¬ 
mination whether or not deceased was m a sound state of 
mind when he committed the act. The evidence cer¬ 
tainly tended to show that he had been, in consequence 
of his affairs, in a state almost, if not quite, bordering 
on insanity. „ , - . . 
The jury immediately returned a verdict of suicide 
while of unsound mind .—Hampshire Telegraph and 
Sussex Chronicle. 
fvcimto. 
Air and Bain : The Beginnings of a Chemical Clima- 
tology. By R. Angus Smith, Ph.D., F.R.S., P .C.S. 
The science of chemical climatology promises to be an 
extensive and important one, since this large volume, 
containing the results of an enormous number of experi¬ 
ments, which have occupied the author during the aso 
eight or ten years, is still truly only concerned with the 
beginnings of the subject. The book is very well written, 
and is remarkably free from errors of the press.. I he 
hieroglyphic on the cover is rather puzzling, and is ap¬ 
parently not explained in any part of the work ; but it 
seems to be the symbol for “Air” suggested by Berg- 
mann in the last century. 
The introduction gives a terrible list, of the substances 
commonly to be found in air, including carbonic acid, 
hydrogen and its compounds, hydrochloric, sulphuric 
and sulphurous acids, sulphuretted hydrogen, the multi¬ 
form debris of living things, living things themselves, 
chloride and sulphate of sodium, nitrate of ammonium, 
lime salts, iron, phosphates, iodides, “ and probably a 
little of everything, at times, . . . which the sea or 
the surface of the land may contain;” so that tho 
author says, “ instead of thinking it nothing, we are now 
inclined to go nearer to the other extreme.” 
A very important correction is made of the statement, 
often found in works on physiology, that air can sup¬ 
port respiration until it contains ten per cent, of car¬ 
bonic acid. It is shown by a number of careful experi¬ 
ments that human beings cannot long endure an atmo¬ 
sphere containing more than four per cent., the higher 
numbers having probably been obtained by experiments 
of very short duration. But although as much as two 
or three per cent, of carbonic acid causes but little 
annoyance, it is shown that this is only true when other 
impurities are absent. The senses detect the difference 
between the air of the streets and of the parks of Lon¬ 
don, where the difference of the carbonic acid is only 
•004 per cent., the real annoyance, arising from organic 
matter and gases from putrefaction.. Hence the quan¬ 
tity of carbonic acid found is significant, “ because it 
almost always comes in bad company.” 
The passage on page 67 should be commended to the 
attention of the authorities concerned. It is there shown 
that the atmosphere of a London law court contained a 
less amount of oxygen than any place above ground except 
the gallery of a theatre which had been extremely 
crowded for a whole evening. Dr. Smith says delibe¬ 
rately that this court was worse than a midden, that it 
was not to be voluntarily borne, and that the feeling of 
relief on coming out was remarkably pleasant. The air 
of the lantern of the same court was worse, still. Can 
it be reasonable to expect justice to be administered by 
men working in such a “ black hole of London, espe¬ 
cially as the judges are seated aloft, and so subjected to 
the atmospheric sewage of all present ? 
It is somewhat surprising after the numbers m the 
earlier part of the book showing that, as far as oxygen 
and carbonic acid are concerned, the air of the western 
parts of London is rather better than that of. tho re¬ 
mainder of the metropolis, to find that the rain-water 
of the western and west central districts contains a much 
greater proportion of chlorides, sulphates, and free acid 
than that of other districts. 
The paragraph at page 414, on the sense of smell, is 
extremely important, and to the chemist raises the ques¬ 
tion whether a laboratory, with its atmosphere almost 
always charged with varying odours, is a proper place 
in which to exercise it. Ought not things whose odour 
is to be examined to be first carried into the open air ? 
Dr. Smith says, in order to give the sense of smell a 
fair field, “ The organ must work in. pure air, and the 
substance to be tested must be put to it for a shoit time 
only.” • . 
Perhaps the most valuable part of the whole book is 
that devoted to the subject of ventilation, of which 
people talk so much, and know and do so little. A\ e 
are told that the amount of organic matter exhaled into 
the air increases with the temperature, while the car - 
bonic acid does not; and as the latter is not perceptible 
when not in excessive quantity, we ventilate fieel) m 
warm weather to get rid of the active annoyance of or¬ 
ganic matter, but are careless on this point in the colu 
season ; so that the result of want of ventilation is m 
summer a feeling of closeness, and in winter, of drowsi¬ 
ness caused by the accumulation of carbonic acid an 
consequent lowering of vitality.. This is principal y 
spoken of in connection with public places of assemb y, 
but is also true of private houses. AVe are told that T6 
per cent, of carbonic acid affects a candle sensibly ; w hat 
then is likely to be the effect on the human frame of the 
atmosphere of a bedroom winch contains *231 per cent 
i as in Pettenkofer’s analysis given on page 49 ? let it is 
