A young healthy man, at 20 years old, received a contusion by a fall, was instantly carried to a neighbouring surgeon, and, at my request, bled in the following manner.
I inserted a glass funnel into the neck of a large clear phial about ℥x. contents, and bled him into it to about ℥viii. By these means the blood was exposed to the air as little a time as possible, as it flowed into the bottle as it came from the orifice.
As soon as the quantity proposed was drawn, the bottle was carefully corked, and brought to me. It was then quite fluid, nor was there the least separation of its parts.
On the surface of this I conveyed several streams of fixed air (having first placed the bottle with the blood in a bowl of water, heated as nearly to the human heat as possible) from the mixture of the vitriolic acid and lixiv. tartar, which I use preferably to other alkalines, as being (as Dr. Cullen observes) in the mildest state, and therefore most likely to generate most air.
I shook the phial often, and threw many streams of air on the blood, as I have often practised with success for impregnating water; but could not perceive the smallest signs of coagulation, although it stood in an atmosphere of fixed air 20 minutes or more. I then uncorked the bottles, and poured off about ℥ii to which I added about 6 or 7 gtts of spirit of vitriol, which coagulated it immediately. I set the remainder in a cold place and it coagulated, as near as I could judge, in the same time that blood would have done newly drawn from the vein.
P. 82. Perhaps the circumilance of putrid vegetables yielding all fixed and no inflammable air may be the causes of their proving so antiseptic, even when putrid, as appears by Mr. Alexander's Experiments.
P. 86. Perhaps the putrid air continually exhaled may be one cause of the luxuriancy of plants growing on dunghills or in very rich soils.
P. 146. Your observation that inflammable air consists of the union of some acid vapour with phlogiston, puts me in mind of an old observation of Dr. Cullen, that the oil separated from soap by an acid was much more inflammable than before, resembling essential oil, and soluble in V. sp.
I have tried fixed air as an antiseptic taken in by respiration, but with no great success. In one case it seemed to be of service, in two it seemed indifferent, and in one was injurious, by exciting a cough.