Februory l 1873.] THE PHARMAGEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
605 
THE CHEMISTRY OP THE GREAT TIRE.* 
A conflagration so extensive and destructive as that 
which laid waste a considerable portion of the city of 
Boston in November must be interesting and instructive 
in its chemical aspects, and we design to briefly direct 
attention to some of these. The process of combustion, 
whether it involves immense structures, or is confined to 
the narrow limits of a candle or common friction match, 
is strictly a chemical process. The burning of Boston 
was a chemical experiment on a vast scale, and withal 
so costly that the spectators hardly wish to see it re¬ 
peated. To burn a substance is simply to change its 
condition; the matter involved is not destroyed, but 
from chemical action it is forced into new relationships, 
or into new forms of matter. There was nothing what¬ 
ever actually destroyed by fire in this city on the night of 
November 9th, but an immense amount of material was 
changed from a valuable or marketable condition into 
one having no value. The sugar, coflee, tea and spices 
of the grocer ; the prints, flannels, laces and silks of the 
dry goods dealer; the opium, gums, oils, and extracts of 
the druggist; the salts, acids, alkaloids and reagents of 
the chemist, consumed on that night, were but common 
and valueless elements thrown into complex combina¬ 
tions by nature or art, so as to meet or supply human 
wants. In the condition in which the hydrogen, carbon, 
oxygen, nitrogen, the metals, etc., existed, of which these 
diversified substances were composed, they were needful 
to feed us, keep us warm, or relieve us when ill; they, 
therefore, as related to our wants, had value ; we were 
willing to exchange gold for them, a metal of such noble 
characteristics and so sparsely disseminated upon our 
planet that we find it to be a convenient representative 
of value. We had toiled for months or years to form 
these chemical substances and fabrics, or we had sent 
our ships to every point of the globe to gather them up, 
and we had stored them safely, as we supposed, in our 
warehouses. But the fire came, and in sixteen hours 
the whole was resolved into carbonic oxide, carbonic 
acid, water and a few tons of ash ; products which we 
can neither eat, wear, nor utilize in any way to advan¬ 
tage. We do not need the forms of matter which the 
fire left for us, but we did need the same elements in 
the other forms, as we had them before the conflagration. 
Combustion is a wonderful process. It may go on 
rapidly, as it did in November, and lay waste a city in a 
single night, or it may proceed slowly, and require cen¬ 
turies to effect the same changes. Our immense stores 
of merchandise, which were resolved so rapidly into in¬ 
visible forms, would have passed through the same 
changes—in short, "would have been burned—if no fire 
had come nigh them. This result would have been in¬ 
evitable, if we had consumed them as food, worn them as 
clothing, or allowed them to waste from neglect. The 
burning would have been as actual as that of which we 
were eye-witnesses. The same amount of heat would 
have been developed, and the resultant products the same. 
All organized bodies are constantly undergoing a process 
of decay, which is slow combustion, and although we do 
not see the light or feel the heat, it is accompanied by 
them. The world of organized matter is certainly des¬ 
tined to be burned, but we prefer the slow form to the 
rapid, as we have had a notable example of the latter 
which will suffice for a lifetime. 
It is quite easy to understand that wood and other 
organized bodies can burn; but the combustion of build¬ 
ings constructed of brick, stone, and iron presents a pro¬ 
blem not a little puzzling to many. A fire, sweeping 
through the streets of a city, lays low whole blocks of 
buildings, into which nothing combustible enters, save 
the wooden partitions, floors, and stair-cases, and these 
while burning afford combustible material enough to 
expand and topple over our thin walls, and render the 
ruin complete. Buildings considered fire-proof, that is, 
those constructed without wood, can be destroyed by 
* From the ‘ Boston Journal of Chemistry.’ 
fire, if any ignitible material is burned within them. 
The Palace of the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville, in 
Paris, burned by the wretched Commune, were fire¬ 
proof buildings, and without the aid of our American 
kerosene oil or some similar inflammable material, they 
could not have been ruined as they were. It required 
nearly three hundred barrels of kerosene oil to destroy 
the Tuileries. The miscreants hoisted a barrel or more 
into each room, and knocking out the heads, allowed it 
to flow over the building, and when it was thoroughly 
saturated, they set it on fire. The metal and stone used 
in the structure were rapidly expanded by the intense 
heat, the walls were pushed outwards, the roof fell in, 
and the destruction was complete. 
Our Boston fire has demonstrated the influence which 
extreme heat has upon granite structures. They do 
not withstand its influence so well as those built of 
brick, and therefore are not as safe buildings in time of 
large conflagrations. Pearl Street was lined with 
granite buildings, and after the fire the work of disinte¬ 
gration was so thoroughly accomplished that fine granitic 
sand covered the pavement several inches deep. Water 
we recognize as the antagonist of fire, and it was most 
liberally supplied in our great conflagration. It seems 
a little paradoxical at first view, the act of pouring an 
agent on to a fire with the design of arresting it, when 
we remember that the fluid itself i3 composed of two ele¬ 
ments, one of which is highly combustible, and the other 
the grand supporter of combustion. It has been 
stated in several journals, that water thrown upon 
the fire in the form of spray was decomposed into its 
gaseous condition, and therefore actually fed the flames. 
Now this is not correct. We doubt if a single one of 
the millions of gallons employed was thus decomposed. 
It requires a most intense heat, equal to that of a blast¬ 
furnace, to decompose water, and it must also be accom¬ 
plished under peculiar conditions. Water thrown upon 
buildings is often dissipated in steam by contact with 
flame before it reaches the burning body. Most of that 
used in this city was thus rendered ineffective, as the 
buildings were high, and the water was sub-divided into 
mist before reaching the point upon, which it was 
directed. Water quenches fire by physical contact with 
the burning body, covering it, and thereby excluding 
the contact with atmospheric oxygen ; also, it instantly 
reduces the temperature of ignited substances, by va¬ 
porization. By the sudden change from a liquid to 
vapour, it robs the substance of the heat necessary to 
keep up combustion, which is thus extinguished. 
It is certain that we must seek new devices for sub¬ 
duing fires in large cities, and we will describe a plan 
which we think would prove practicable and effective. 
The plan is based upon the idea that every building 
must depend upon its own apparatus, and not upon that 
belonging to any municipality. Twenty years ago we 
employed carbonic acid water for quenching fires, long 
before any of the so-called fire-annihilators were used, 
and it is an agent so effective, and so easily and cheaply 
produced, that it must come into general use. Our plan 
is to place in the basement of every warehouse or store 
an iron vessel resembling a steam boiler, the capacity 
to depend upon the size of the building. This is to be 
kept two-thirds full of water, the chamber above the 
water to hold two glass vessels, one of which is filled with 
acid, the other with bicarbonate of soda. By a very 
simple device those glass vessels may be broken at any 
moment, so that the substances will instantly developo 
carbonic acid, which being absorbed by the water 
changes it into aerated, or carbonic acid water. The 
gas over the water affords immense pressure, and by 
pipes leading from the strong iron fountain, the gas- 
impregnated water may bo directed at once upon the fire 
in its incipient stages, in any portion of the building. 
One gallon of this water is as effective as ten of common, 
water, and therefore can be used to extinguish a fire 
without the great water damage to goods which often 
