“These properties are terrible; why not confess it? For the most infinitesimal quantity of this gas in the air we breathe is sufficient to arrest in three minutes the normal action of the lungs and to destroy life.
“Everybody knows that carbonic-oxide (known in chemistry as CO) is a permanent gas without odor, color or taste, and nearly insoluble in water. Its density in comparison with the air is 0.96. It burns in the air with a blue flame of slight illuminating power, like a funereal fire, the product of this combustion being carbonic anhydride.
“Its most notable property is its tendency to absorb oxygen. (The orator dwelt upon these two words with great emphasis.) In the great iron furnaces, for example, carbon, in the presence of an insufficient quantity of air, becomes transformed into carbonic-oxide, and it is subsequently this oxide which reduces the iron to a metallic state, by depriving it of the oxygen with which it was combined.
“In the sunlight carbonic-oxide combines with chlorine and gives rise to an oxychlorine (COCL2)—a gas with a disagreeable, suffocating odor.
“The fact which deserves our more serious attention, is that this gas is of the most poisonous character—far more so than carbonic anhydride. Its effect upon the hemoglobin is to diminish the respiratory capacity of the blood, and even in very small doses, by its cumulative effect, hinders, to a degree altogether out of proportion to the apparent cause, the oxygenizing properties of the blood. For example: blood which absorbs from twenty-three to twenty-four cubic centimeters of oxygen per hundred volumes, absorbs only one-half as much in an atmosphere which contains less than one-thousandth part of carbonic-oxide. The one-ten-thousandth part even has a deleterious effect, sensibly diminishing the respiratory action of the blood. The result is not simple asphyxia, but an almost instantaneous blood-poisoning. Carbonic-oxide acts directly upon the blood corpuscles, combining with them and rendering them unfit to sustain life: hematosis, that is, the conversion of venous into arterial blood, is arrested. Three minutes are sufficient to produce death. The circulation of the blood ceases. The black venous blood fills the arteries as well as the veins. The latter, especially those of the brain, become surcharged, the substance of the brain becomes punctured, the base of the tongue, the larynx, the wind-pipe, the bronchial tubes become red with blood, and soon the entire body presents the characteristic purple appearance which results from the suspension of hematosis.
“But, gentlemen, the injurious properties of carbonic-oxide are not the only ones to be feared; the mere tendency of this gas to absorb oxygen would bring about fatal results. To suppress, nay, even only to diminish oxygen, would suffice for the extinction of the human species. Everyone here present is familiar with that incident which, with so many others, marks the epoch of barbarism, when men assassinated each other legally in the name of glory and of patriotism; it is a simple episode of one of the English wars in India. Permit me to recall it to your memory:
“One hundred and forty-six prisoners had been confined in a room whose only outlets were two small windows opening upon a corridor; the first effect experienced by these unfortunate captives was a free and persistent perspiration, followed by insupportable thirst, and soon by great difficulty in breathing. They sought in various ways to get more room and air; they divested themselves of their clothes; they beat the air with their hats, and finally resorted to kneeling and rising together at intervals of a few seconds; but each time some of those whose strength failed them fell and were trampled under the feet of their comrades. Before midnight, that is, during the fourth hour of their confinement, all who were still living, and who had not succeeded in obtaining purer air at the windows, had fallen into a lethargic stupor, or a frightful delirium. When, a few hours later, the prison door was opened, only twenty-three men came out alive; they were in the most pitiable state imaginable; every face wearing the impress of the death from which they had barely escaped.
THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA.
“I might add a thousand other examples, but it would be useless, for doubt upon this point is impossible. I therefore affirm, gentlemen, that, on the one hand, the absorption by the carbonic-oxide of a portion of the atmospheric oxygen, or, on the other, the powerfully toxic properties of this gas upon the vital elements of the blood, alike seem to me to give to the meeting of our globe with the immense mass of the comet—in the heart of which we shall be plunged for several hours—I affirm, I repeat, that this meeting involves consequences absolutely fatal. For my part, I see no chance of escape.